



Book 'Z i^ 



GopightN". 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



GROWING A LIFE 



A BOOK FOR THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 



By 

CHARLES EVANS 

President of the Central State Normal School, 
Edmond, Oklahoma 




RAND McNALLY & COMPAIIY 

Chicago j^^,r^ yj..j^ 



Copyright, 19 12. by Charles Evans ^ 



\» 'T 






i£ CI. A 3^08 53 



To my two sons 
Charles and Edward 



THE PREFACE 

THIS book is bom of a desire to serve. There is 
nothing original about it, unless to view pedagogy 
as a life process be original. 

It has been our privilege annually to meet in Kentucky, 
Oklahoma, and Texas many teachers and parents and 
talk to them of the child. At such times these thoughts 
took shape around that theme. Kind hearts and keen 
minds were interested in the views here put forth, accepted 
some of them, and said they were practical. In such 
tributes a certain latitude is to be allowed for insincerity, 
yet in ten years and more of contact with hfe we have 
found more than enough of truth to make us "trust the 
larger hope." 

The principles here announced have been tested in 
the laboratory of home and school for nearly a score of 
years. They are the thoughts of the wisest we have met, 
hammered into something of a unit by the child as we 
met him in the everyday world. Our school service, 
whatever it has been, is due directly to an appropriation 
and application of these principles. What has helped us 
so much may help others a little. 

Often the child, the center of all systems of education, is 
overlooked while the puny satellites — texts, methods, and 
routine — monopolize attention. In this work, therefore, 
the child is elevated above all else. 

Throughout the work there is an attempt to express 
a pedagogy of conviction, of personal entreaty, of joyous- 
ness of living, and more especially of the divine happiness 
of living with children. 

The teacher should be a leader, it matters not the place 



6 THE PREFACE 

or time. Therefore pictures of live teachers are often 
presented as well as sketches of some of their opposites. 

The first six lectures, for the chapters are given in that 
form, undertake to lay a simple yet firm foundation for 
growing a life. A little of psychology and metaphysics 
was necessary to widen and strengthen the base. The 
work is so constructed that the reader may take up any 
division and get in each a unit of thought. Each lecture 
tells a complete story. 

There is an attempt made in these pages to grow a life 
naturally, under law, constantly unfolding at all times 
toward the end, completion, and climax of all life — 
enthusiastic, righteous character — and filling its place as 
a useful citizen in a great Republic. 

C. E. 

Edmond, Okla., September, igi2. 



THE CONTENTS 



PAGE 



The Preface 5 

CHAPTER 

I The Law of Laws 9 

II The Law of Continuity 14 

III Mind and Force 20 

IV Mind and Growth 26 

V Consciousness 34 

VI Self-activity 45 

VII Righteousness 59 

VIII Happiness the Birthright 73 

IX Food . 86 

X Stimuli 96 

XI Training 116 

XII Appetite 136 

XIII Time i49 

XIV Freedom 163 

XV Powers 176 

XVI Processes 185 

XVII The Great Ideal i95 

An Outline of the Book 203 



GROWING A LIFE 

CHAPTER I 

THE LAW OF LAWS 

TN the last two decades much has been said and written 
-*• about the child. This has sprung from an increasing 
faith in the truism that the child is father of the man; 
that whatever you would have a race be, see that its 
children are not neglected. 

Out of all this desire and effort to better the lot of 
the child two individuals have been most benefited : first 
the child, next the teacher. In fact, viewing it from that 
point of truth which reveals that the sacrificing toiler 
receives the chief reward, the teacher, because of all his 
endeavor to reduce the chance of children being bom to a 
life of hopeless ignorance, should be rated as the one most 
blest. Even as Columbus, through a vision enlarged by 
sacrifice and a feeling divinely illumined by persecuted 
yet unconquerable faith, saw not a few scattered islands 
but "came upon a new world and saw the rivers roll from 
Paradise,'* just so did Froebel, Pestalozzi, and the true 
teachers following after through an equivalent of toil and 
suffering achieve the greater blessing in the discovery 
of a mental freedom for the human race through its 
childhood. 

The progressive teacher of all time has been marked 
by work and receptivity. In demand for more fields to 
conquer, the educators of America have broadened the 
educational tests for teaching, placed pedagogy in all the 
great institutions of learning, created normal and summer 



lo GROWING A LIFE 

schools, molded and sustained lecture courses, and forced 
upon a reluctantly yielding body politic the worth and 
dignity of child life. Reading, listening, seeing, the 
teachers of the land have pushed their way through the 
darkness of superstition and ignorance to save mankind, 
their brothers. "Fear God, and keep your eyes open," 
were the last words of Dickens's mother to her son Charles. 
Whether he followed the first part of this advice to the 
letter we do not know, but Pickwick Papers and David 
Copperfield assure us that he kept his eyes open. So the 
multitude of books read, the papers and pamphlets issued, 
the migration of the educators of this country to every 
point of the compass where instruction and thought can 
be had, prove beyond doubt that the teachers are getting 
their eyes open. 

Yet with all this desire and endeavor to reach the light 
education as a real science still lies beyond us. We pile 
our treatises on mind and methods about us heaven high, 
and extract therefrom myriad plans only to find that the 
new discoveries are but exhumations from a pedagogical 
graveyard, long since forgotten. We turn in dismay to 
living masters and beg for educational bread, and quite 
too often, in high-sounding metaphor and appalling 
exegeses, are handed a stone. When one thinks of the 
many books written, the many lectures delivered to 
assist the teacher yet put forth in style and substance 
as if the intent were to conceal thought rather than reveal 
it, the boyhood prayer of Abraham Lincoln, one of Nature's 
schoolmasters, rises to the lips. The pedantic itinerant 
preacher was spending the evening in the Lincoln home. 
The topics, politics and religion, rife with the virility of 
pioneer days, were uppermost. Just as young Lincoln's 
interests would leap into flame at some startling piece of 



THE LAW OF LAWS ii 

news, the preacher would quench the fire with a torrent 
of verbosity. To the dismay of the eager but disgusted 
boy this went on for two hours. At last, worn out, he 
cHmbed to his attic and in his agonizing search for reUef 
from such mental bHght prayed: "O Lord, whenever I 
talk and use words no one can understand, kill me there 
and then. Amen." 

What we need most in the training world to-day is a 
thinker who will seize the few well-defined principles of 
education with a grip so sure and firm as to transform 
them into a true and unfailing pedagogical magnet. 
To this magnet we may bring our purposes and our 
plans. If these cleave, they are time; if rejected, they 
are false. It matters not whether this be original mate- 
rial. The demand is not so much for originaHty as for 
clearness and stability. 

In addressing ourselves to any effort in this direction 
one thought towers above all others: there must be an 
unfailing basis upon which to rest our reasoning. The 
polestar must not be more unwavering than the theory 
upon which a system of child training must depend. The 
oracle of the child must climb a Sinai and gather mes- 
sages fresh from God before he speaks as one having 
authority. 

Where shall we find this oracle? Where are the lips 
that speak unvarying truth? Where are the pens that 
trace infallible law? Where may the eye, though hedged 
by finite weakness, look upon infinite strength? Where 
may the teacher go to gather unchanging principles of 
childhood's growth? To the first and last great teacher. 
Nature — the one infallible guide, with whom it is better 
to eat a crust of truth than to feast sumptuously at the 
tables of philosophers and poets. 



12 GROWING A LIFE 

"To build, to plant, whatever you intend, 
To rear the column or the arch to bend; 
To swell the terrace or to sink t'az grot: 
In all let nature never be forgot. " 

The mind staggers beneath the breadth and compass 
of this trite word, Nature, and begs an illuminating defi- 
nition. Some workm.an chiseled into the v/all of the 
Congressional Library at Washington: "Nature is the 
Poetry of God. " Drummond says it is a scaffolding by 
which we climb from the known to the unknown, from 
the material to the mental, and from the mental to the 
spiritual. The teacher, in accepting man the learner as 
a phenomenon of Nature, can find real assistance in this 
definition: " Nature is the creation or projection of God 
in order to reveal himself unto Himself and unto His 
creatures." 

That man was made in the image of his Maker is no 
longer a phrase from an accepted creed, but a scientific 
fact. As far as human mind can trace, Nature reveals 
the truth that specie stamps succeeding specie with 
characteristics similar to its own. When we hear the song 
sparrow's note we hear the twitterings of the first song 
sparrow created. So with man; look upon him, note his 
attributes, and we have a right to exclaim in scientific 
terms as in poetry, "How like a god!" 

Man works, thinks, produces the savage speech, the pic- 
tured thought, the monolith and the stylus, the Caxton 
Press and the electrically driven Hoe cylinder, all "to 
reveal himself unto himself and unto his creatures." 
This then is fundamental, that Nature is the one unfailing 
revelator, the one true teacher. With her we must ever 
work; to her we must ever go for guidance. With the 
simple law of the natural world in his grasp, the humblest 



THE LAW OF LAWS 13 

teacher in the land, so far as he uses it, is on an equality 
with the most famous and capable, 

"For truth is truth 
To the end of reckoning." 

To make a few of these truths his own is a work of any 
student and lover of the child. 



CHAPTER II 
THE LAW OF CONTINUITY 

THE nineteenth century was a remarkable epoch in 
the evolution of man. In truth, when we view 
that century through the perspective of invention or 
science there seem but two divisions of all time — first, 
the nineteenth century ; second, all time preceding it. If 
one were to say that the greatest feat of human progress 
is the annihilation of time and space through the inven- 
tion of the telegraph, telephone, and cable, that would be 
an idle statement. Or if one were to say that by means 
of the microscope, telescope, and spectroscope man had 
been given a new heaven and a new earth, and that 
through the phonograph the dead still speak, even yet 
the chief conquest of mind is not found. But behold a 
quiet but persistent group of men, thinking, thinking 
with no guide but truth, no master but truth, with 
no end in view but to know the truth, silently 
breaking the fetters of prejudice, bravely assaulting error 
and superstition wherever found — Darwin, Spencer, Tyn- 
dall, Faraday, and Huxley pushing their way up the 
steep, rough paths which lead to the greatest of dis- 
coveries. At last it was secure, and for all invention, 
science, reHgion, and government man had an unfailing 
basis in the truth that this imiverse is a thing of law. 

Until the year 1850 there was no science, save mathe- 
matics, worthy of the name. Chemistry was alchemy, 
astronomy was astrology, geology was guesswork gibbeted 
by superstition, and chaos ruled the whole. But "back 
to Nature" became the cry, and through microscope and 

14 



THE LAW OF CONTINUITY 15 

telescope daring minds looked into atoms and burning 
worlds, and lo, all was law ! They analyzed the crawling 
worm, the drifting seaweed, man himself, and as they 
looked, compared, and reasoned they were forced to 
exclaim : 

" All's love, yet all's law . . . 
Perfection, no more and no less, 

In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God 
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod. " 

It remained, however, for the latter part of the century 
to see the final conquest. For while law was established 
in the material kingdom all effort to project it into or 
relate it with mental or spiritual phenomena was bitterly 
opposed. The physicist closed his eyes to mental or 
spiritual phenomena, while he berated the pulpiteer. 
The pulpiteer declared there was no revelation of truth 
save one, and this new story of the natural world was a 
cheat and a snare. So from i860 to 1880 was fought the 
greatest war in thought the world has ever known. No 
quarter was asked and none was given. But just when the 
hour seemed darkest, when the scientist in his pain and 
persecution was about to cry, "I will have nothing of 
your God and His soul-world," and the exhausted and 
infuriated idealist hurl back at him, "Henceforth there 
is an inseparable gap between us," Henry Drummond 
stepped forth, saying, "Peace, be still. You must not 
talk about your natural world and your spiritual world, 
your realm of matter and your realm of mind. I say 
unto you there is but one world, one realm, encircled and 
controlled by a supreme law, and that is the law of 
continuity. 

"It has been my privilege," continued Drummond, 
"for some years to address regularly two very different 



i6 GROWING A LIFE 

audiences on two very different themes. On week-daj'-s I 
have lectured to a class of students on the Natural Sciences, 
and on Sundays to an audience consisting for the most part 
of working men on subjects of a moral and religious char- 
acter. I cannot say that this collocation ever appeared as 
a difficulty to myself, but to certain of my friends it was 
more than a problem. It was solved to me, however, at 
first, by what then seemed the necessities of the case — I 
must keep the two departments entirely by themselves. 
They lay at opposite poles of thought; and for a time I 
succeeded in keeping the Science and the Religion shut 
off from one another in two separate compartments of 
my mind. But gradually the wall of partition showed 
symptoms of giving way. The two fountains of knowledge 
also slowly began to overflow, and finally their waters 
met and mingled. The great change was in the compart- 
ment which held the Religion. It was not that the well 
there was dried; still less that the fermenting waters were 
washed away by the flood of Science. The actual con- 
tents remained the same. But the crystals of former 
doctrine were dissolved; and as they precipitated them- 
selves once more in definite forms, I observed that the 
Crystalline System was changed. New channels also for 
outward expression opened, and some of the old closed up; 
and I found the truth running out to my audience on the 
Sundays by the week-day outlets. In other words, the 
subject-matter Religion had taken on the method of ex- 
pression of Science, and I discovered myself enunciating 
Spiritual Law in the exact terms of Biology and Physics." 
This quotation, given at length, discloses in Drummond's 
own way how he had traced the web of natural law into 
the mental or spiritual world and found nowhere a break 
in the thread, and how in the same way this man of 



THE LAW OF CONTINUITY 17 

genius traced the line of truth from the Bible only to be 
led to the natural law. 

"Verily many thinkers of this age, 

Are wrong in just my sense who understood 
Our natural world too insularly, as if 
No spiritual counterpart completed it. 
Consummating its meaning, rounding all 
To justice and perfection, line by Une, 
Form by form, nothing single nor alone. 
The great below clenched by the great above. " 

Then there broke a chorus from Tennyson, Browning, 
and Carlyle, caught up in America by Emerson and sent 
through all the earth, proclaiming: 

''Detached, separated! I say there is no such separa- 
tion. Nothing hitherto was ever estranged, cast aside; 
but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with 
all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of 
Action and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. The 
withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are forces in it 
and around it, though working in inverse order; else how 
could it rot? Despise not the rag from which man makes 
paper, or the litter from which the earth makes cork. 
Rightly viewed, no meanest object is insignificant; all 
objects are as windows through which the philosophic 
eye looks into Infinitude itself." 

So the idea of the universe being a thing of law and 
the supreme law of the universe being continuity moved 
along, gathering momentum until it was accepted as the 
basis of order in the existence of all science, all poetry, 
all art, all religion. There is nothing new in this. It is 
God's beneficent attitude. Like electricity, like gravita- 
tion, like radiimi, it has always existed, though unknown 
and unused until science brought it to light. But now 
2 



i8 GROWING A LIFE 

under this new order a truth here is a truth there. A law 
here of the inorganic rock is a law of the organic worm, 
can the mind but trace it. From material to physical, 
from physical to mental, from mental to spiritual the 
mind now steps without a break, and the law of con- 
tinuity reigns supreme. 

Let the teacher rejoice that at last an immovable 
point of view for the study of the child has been found. 
"Pedagogics as a science," says Herbart, "is based on 
ethics and psychology. . . . The former points out 
the goal of education; the latter the way, the means and 
the obstacles." But let the teacher reach beyond this 
and get a firmer, clearer, simpler basis. The center of 
pedagogics is the child. The child is a phenomenon of 
Nature, and is to be studied like any other work of Nature 
through the law of continuity. 

Psychology in the hands of its best American expositor, 
William James, preaches no other doctrine. Who can 
read the chapter on "Habit" in his epoch-making work 
(epoch-making, because he followed mind under the law 
of continuity closer than ever before attempted) and not 
feel that here at last is substance? Here the mind is 
subjected to the same inspection, the same analysis, in 
its medium, the brain, as is the air in its medium, the 
lungs. Here is not physical analogy upon which to rest 
practical truths of mental habit, but physical law, as fixed 
and unchangeable, because the very same, as that which 
holds the stars in place and brings the rivers from the hills 
to the sea. 

Ethics, under the influence of continuous law, has taken 
on new life and given a divine range to the child and 
its teacher. The old ethical conception was based upon 
the belief that all other species of animals and all worlds 



THE LAW OF CONTINUITY 19 

were produced for the exclusive benefit of man. But 
biology, under natural law, reveals such a general con- 
tinuity of the nervous structure throughout the whole 
animal kingdom that John Fiske says: "I can hardly 
doubt that the butterfly really enjoys life somewhat as we 
enjoy it, though far less vividly. I cannot but think 
that he finds honey sweet and perfume pleasant and color 
attractive, and that he feels a likesome gladness as he 
flits in the sunshine from flower to flower, and knows a faint 
thrill at the sight of his chosen mate. Still more is this 
belief forced upon me when I reflect that save only in a 
few aberrant types, sugar is sweet to taste, thyme to smell 
and song to hear, and sunshine to bask in. " 

Here, teachers, is one world, not two or more, governed 
by a sweet concord of law which exclaims 

"How strange is human pride! 
I tell thee that those living things, 
To whom the fragile blade of grass, 

That springeth in the mom 

And perisheth ere noon. 

Is an unbounded world; 
I tell thee that those viewless beings, 
Whose mansion is the smallest particle 

Of the impassive atmosphere, 
Think, feel and live like man ; 
That their affections, and antipathies, 

Like his, produce the laws 

Ruling their moral state; 

And the minutest throb 
That through their frame diffuses 

The slightest, faintest motion, 

Is fixed and indispensable 

As the majestic laws 

That rule yon rolling orbs. " 



CHAPTER III 

MIND AND FORCE 

THE child is the central figure in the field of pedagogy. 
Some great teacher said: "Three things should 
a trainer of children study: Nature, the Bible, and 
the Child. " Whatever triune of the schoolroom may be 
named, the child must be in the center of it. Because 
here is at once the object of attack and defense, here is 
the thing which molds and shapes the standard of earth's 
possibilities; for here is mind, the child. 

It is easy to find definitions for mind. Lexicographers, 
philosophers, and psychologists can furnish them by the 
score. But after they have defined it we may call in 
vain upon all the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and 
Chaldeans to interpret their psychologic dreams. There 
is a Daniel, however, who stands so close to the Revealer 
of Secrets that we may trust him for a simple interpre- 
tation of this word. This Daniel is generous and infalli- 
ble Nature. 

Language is an effort to interpret Nature. The senses 
slip out of their narrow cells and climb by matter up to 
words. How many cycles of sensing, experience, joy, 
and suffering are mirrored in such words as body, soul, 
and God ! These are indeed pyramids from which more 
than "forty centimes look down upon us.** Into this 
environment wanders mind, testing, analyzing, selecting, 
rejecting, until at last conception stands triumphant 
with a name — a word. 

Let us with primitive faith imder natural law enter 
upon a search for a definition of mind based upon its 



MIND AND FORCE 21 

most decisive phenomenon. What myriad worids lie 
about us! But upon closer scrutiny they become one, 
"whose body Nature is, and God the soul." Here lies 
substance, passive, inert. Out of the vortex of the great 
unknown moves a mysterious, intangible, all-pervading 
something, seizes upon the material, and all is action. 
This last because it impels, coerces, repels, energizes,— 
in short, does. We call it "Fors" or force. 

Here are the two expressions of divinity, —matter and 
force. To which of these does mind belong? Look upon 
mind, note its phenomena, and then decide. Hedged 
about by infancy, it is ever active, ever struggUng for a 
better light. To youth it bequeathes the power of mental 
comparison and bodily energy, the miracles of Nature. 
Maturity brings us to man. 

**Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds 
Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing 
To soar unv/earied, fearlessly to turn 
The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste 
The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield. " 

Look upon mind, a child prattling in infancy or a Webster 
in the forum, fashioning a toy in youth or an engine 
in maturity, planning a lesson in school or shaping a 
charter of civil liberty. Mind must be classed among 
the forces. Mind must be clearly defined by Natiu-e 
as a force. Beyond that we cannot go; less than that 
is not truth. 

One would exclaim, "Why all this array of facts and 
words to arrive at a conclusion so simple and so apparent? 
Let it be understood now and here that such exclamations 
reveal as nothing else the weakness and poverty attending 
all study of child and mind. That class of workers which 
enters our schoolrooms with half-defined views borrowed 



2 2 • GROW ma A LIFE 

from varied sources, unabsorbed, unassimilated, and 
therefore indigestible and thoroughly hurtful, is only 
exceeded in number by that class which refuses to read 
or think at all. Let it be repeated that what the teacher 
needs are a few well-defined principles of education. The 
demand is not so much for originality as for clearness and 
stability. 

Is the truth that the mind is a force, simple? Then 
revere it, because the Almighty uses simplicity for His 
divine Seal. Is it old? So are the ten laws of Sinai, yet 
to this day they are the bone and sinew of all law. Does 
it make mind a common thing, like heat and friction, 
steam and electricity, which we call forces? Then let 
us rejoice that we have at last found common kinship 
for this subtle, elusive thing called mind — common as 
friction is common, proving man's foothold as he climbs 
to triimiphant invention; common as steam is common, 
as, imprisoned or released by the mind-force, it flies to 
do man's bidding; common as electricity is common, 
which, studied and appreciated as a force, in the flash of 
an eye encircles the world. The statement wrung from 
Nature's lips that mind is a force is as simple and easy 
to grasp as that heat is a form of motion, that matter is 
that which occupies space, or that God is love. But, 
for all this, let the teacher think upon it. 

Those who direct children are besought, after reading 
and associating "Mind is a force" with the environing 
world of substance, to mark that force is something * * which 
changes or tends to change the motion of a body by alter- 
ing either its direction or its magnitude. " Let them note 
when next they enter the schoolroom or home how they 
treat mind in the light of tliis definition. Remember 
now, mind is a force, the changing, subtle, inexhaustible, 



MIND AND FORCE 23 

outward, inward agent of God. It is that, all forces 
are that, and philosophers and scientists admit it while 
they deny it. 

When under the sway of natural law they admit it, 
but as subjects of unnatural law they deny it. It is there 
they treat the mind as a thing to be shaped, a plastic, 
plaster-made thing, and proceed to lay the fingers of the 
personalities all about it. At last a receptacle for text, 
or prescribed rules and daily routine, is made of it. It 
is not a force now; it is a jug. Come, with your spelling, 
your reading, your writing, your arithmetic, and all the 
remaining texts, at the required times, and fill this mind, 
this passive receptacle! 

"Slam it in, cram it in. Children's heads are hollow. " 

This tmthinking attitude toward mind brings us face 
to face with one of the most, if not the most, baneful 
weaknesses of past and present teaching, — the viewing of 
the mind as a passive recipient rather than as a force. 
The jug or pouring-in process, and the drawing-out or 
India-rubber process, have been challenged, condemned, 
and ostracized by the true teachers of all ages, yet the 
schoolrooms of to-day abound with the apostles of such 
methods. 

David Page is a great name in American education. 
Bom in obscurity and tutored by adversity, through a 
divine aspiration to be a teacher he became the coworker 
of Horace Mann, the first normal-school president, and 
an educational power unrivaled in his day. But Page's 
chief legacy to man is that classic. Theory and Practice 
of Teaching, The most potent chapter of this book 
contains a rebiike to the instructor who cannot or will 
not see mind a force. With a taste of humor, which 



24 GROWING A LIFE 

every worker among children should cultivate, Mr. Page 
gives the following too common picture of this foolish 
procedure. 

"'John,' says the teacher when conducting a recitation 
in Long Division, 'John, what is the number to be divided 
called?' John hesitates. 'Is it the dividend?' says 
the teacher. 'Yes, sir — the dividend.* 'Well, John, 
what is that which is left after dividing called? — the 
remainder, is it?' 'Yes, sir.' A visitor now enters the 
room, and the teacher desires to show off John's talents. 
'Well, John, of what denomination is the remainder?' 

"John looks upon the floor. 

'"Isn't it always the same as the dividend, John?' 

'"Yes, sir.' 

"'Very well, John,' says the teacher, soothingly, 'what 
denomination is this dividend ? ' pointing to the work upon 
the board. ' Dollars, is it not ? ' 

"'Yes, sir; dollars.' 

'"Very well; now what is this remainder?' 

"John hesitates. 

'"Why, dollars J too, isn't it?' says the teacher. 

"'Oh, yes, sir, dollars!' says John, energetically, while 
the teacher complacently looks at the visitor to see if he 
has noticed how correctly John has answered!" 

These sketches of the "Yes, sir, " system applied to an 
arithmetic class are as fine as any the author of a Dothe- 
boys Hall could pen. Yet the eyes of thousands have 
passed over this plain and pointed criticism without any 
self-application. Mr. Page realized that this false view 
of mind was a fearful obstacle to natural educational 
processes, and he concludes the chapter mXh. these words : 
"I look upon the two processes just described, as very 
prominent and prevalent faults in our modem teaching; 



MIND AND FORCE 2$ 

and if by describing them thus fully, I shall induce any 
to set a guard upon their practice in this particular, I 
shall feel amply rewarded. " 

Many have read his warning and have taken heed. But 
an honest opinion offered in no spirit of criticism is that 
more would have heeded had they been given the cause 
of the disease along with this vivid exposition of it. If 
they committed the blimder of cribbing and confining 
mind, one of Nature's great forces, was it not because 
they failed to see that learning comes not so much by 
filling in as by opening up a way by which the fettered 
mind may escape? 



CHAPTER IV 
MIND AND GROWTH 

NOTHING is more startling, more awe-inspiring and 
impressive, than science or classified knowledge. A 
simple incident in school life stands out in my memory, 
and proves the truth of this. A visitor came to the 
school and talked to the pupils. That was a common 
occurrence. So we at once began to yawn and show inat- 
tention. But soon this man said something about rocks, 
and drew from his pocket some specimens. We immediately 
straightened up and began to listen, for every barefooted, 
freckle-faced urchin about there was as devout a rock 
worshiper as the disciples of Stonehenge. They used them 
in the worship of their gods ; we used them on jay birds and 
cats. Anyway, the rocks caught our attention. We heard 
the visitor say that every rock had a story as interesting as 
any fairy tale. "This little pebble," said he, "was picked 
out of a gravel pit and comes to light to tell of rolling, tum- 
bling, and rocking on the ocean's blue waves, millions of 
years ago.'* He had almost caught us with his poetry of 
the pebbles when he changed his story to something about 
the great rock families. Our credibility went to pieces here 
and an extra yawn was summoned to call time on him. 
Just then he drew a little bottle from his pocket. Every- 
body sat up again. How clearly, even now, I can hear him 
say: "There are just two sorts of rocks in the world, just 
two. One is made by crj^stallization, the other by some 
kind of animal life. Take a little acid like this in the bottle, 
apply it to a rock, like this [looking closely, I saw with 
bidging eyes little bubbles rise upon it], and if it eats it 

26 



MIND AND GROWTH 27 

as you see this does you may know it is a rock made of 
animal matter. If not [and he poured the contents of the 
bottle over a little slick looking pebble, which only made 
it look slicker], then you may know it is the other sort, or 
siliceous rock." 

This power of classification to dart its keen lance, sev- 
ering with its magic the organic from the inorganic, the 
spurious from the real, the living from the dead, is no 
more impressive than it is necessary. Without it, learn- 
ing would be a wilderness of thorns, thought a traveler 
without a compass, and science unknown. The question 
arises, if mind is a force, where shall it be listed? How 
shall we distinguish it from the other great forces and 
associate it with its own? The same answer must be 
given as before : Let us enter the world of forces, classify 
according to the decisive phenomena, and then we can 
place our finger securely upon mind. 

Track a dewdrop through its brief span and it reveals 
numberless forces. Clinging to the grass blade, it obeys the 
laws of cohesion within and adhesion without. Clamped 
by friction, it is rounded and exists by chemical affinity 
of oxygen for hydrogen. Heated by the sun's rays, its 
dissolution works an electric energy which lives again in 
the thunderbolt of the evening storm. But with all this, 
classification reveals in the material world just two kinds 
of forces, — physical, producing change without altering 
chemical constituents of the substance; chemical, when 
this alteration takes place creating new substances. The 
fall of a dewdrop, the melting of a bullet, the driving of a 
train, and the flow of the Mississippi are examples of phy- 
sical force, while the burning of coal, the making of gun- 
powder, and the decay of matter are results of chemical 
force. 



28 GROWING A LIFE 

Where then does mind appear? One readily notes that 
the mind of a child gathering a lesson from tree or book 
does not merge with phenomena of physical forces. There 
is no change wrought in book, but there is in mind. One 
cannot tell by any process known to man whether this 
change in mind is one of position or dissolution and new 
combination, as in oxygenation of the blood, making new 
corpuscles. It is the belief of ancient and modem thinkers 
that mind never is increased or lessened. It is of the 
infinite, as are other forces, and therefore changeless. So 
any effort to classify mind under physical or chemical 
forces falls to the ground. 

But skirt the edges of these two forces, chemical 
and physical, and you will note they are but poor words 
at best to describe many force phenomena. Some man 
somewhere once upon a time rubbed a bit of amber, and 
a force was released which was so little vmderstood then 
and is so little understood now that the word, electricity, 
coined from the name of a fossil substance, still persists. 
Chemical combination or separation may release it, the 
tail of an eel may discharge it, m^an may store and harness 
it in order to annihilate time and space, but man cannot 
classify it, save under the o!d accidental name, electricity. 

Then there is an organic v/orld dominated by the 
phenomenon called life. It is assisted by physical and 
chemical forces, yet differs so vitally from both that it 
would be straining thought and language to call it either. 
Life is a peculiar manifestation of energy, a thing which no 
human chemist or physicist can develop — a force Nature, 
God's agent, cannot fashion without the assistance of life 
itself. Hear Huxley as, laying aside the microscope and 
retort with which he knit together the ends of all mat- 
ter, he says: "The present state of knowledge furnishes 



MIND AND GROWTH 29 

us with no link between the living and the not-living." 
Yet this life-force furnishes us with the closest link to 
mental force. There is no mind, so far as we know, with- 
out life. There are many who beheve that there is no life 
without mind. But life and mind are so closely associated 
it would be well to inquire what is the decisive phenomenon 
of each. 

Life, to-day within the compass of the microscopic germ; 
to-morrow, the Behemoth whose "bones are as strong pieces 
of brass; his bones are like bars of iron." Life, to-day a 
reed shaken by the wind and at the mercy of a little child ; 
to-morrow, one of God's to-morrows, a giant oak stretching 
in glee its sturdy limbs to the roaring storm. Thus look- 
ing uf)on life where we will, in bee or blossom, in vegetable 
or animal, growth is its chief characteristic. Life is a 
force of growth. 

Mind, to-day within the narrow boundaries of an infant's 
skull; to-morrow, with oratory and imagination bridging 
the centuries with prophecy Hke a Clay, climbing to un- 
known worlds by invention's ladder like a Marconi, or as 
a lover of mankind and the first beloved of his fellowmen 
leaving his name written large in history's page, like 
a Washington. Here as in life, but more intensified, is 
growth — growth, bewitching, mysterious, now slow, now 
meteoric, now true, now defective, but always growth. 
So, in the world of forces, mind must be classified as a 
force of growth. 

Hand in hand we have walked with Nature and Nature's 
spokesmen, and these secrets they have told us: Mind 
is a force; mind is a force of growth. What is it worth to 
the teacher, this last ? Under the law of continuity it says, 
"Enter into all the tangible world of growth, gather 
loiowledge where you ^411, of bursting bud, cixrling tendril, 



30 GROWING A LIFE 

blooming vine, and maturing fniit, and under the same 
laws that these prosper, so prospers mind." Observe, 
teacher, the law of growth under which bird or man 
approaches to physical perfection, and so siu-e as there is 

"One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves," 

so sure does this law apply to the minds under your charge. 
Here in short are some liberating truths this law holds 
for every teacher: 

It puts the mind on a tangible basis beside all vege- 
table and animal life. 

It makes biology a study of mind as well as of life. 

It makes physiology a study of mind-growth as well 
as of bodily growth. 

It makes zoology a study of mind as well as of the 
animal. 

It makes botany contribute, as far as the laws of 
vegetable growth are discovered, to a better under- 
standing of mind-growth. 

It links, combines, crystalhzes separated sciences on 
life-growth by making a truth in one a truth in all. 

It bridges the foolish chasm existing between psy- 
chology and the sensuous world; this last the only 
world, so far as we can sense or know. Imagination 
may swing into aerial realms on wings of prophecy 
and faith, but the heavens seen have gates of 
pearl, earth's pearl, streets of gold, earth's shin- 
ing gold, while angels are but counterparts of the 
blessed fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers 
that make for us a heaven of earth. 



MIND AND GROWTH 31 

The teachers of America have need to cultivate, above 
most things, the sense of S3mibolizing. Such a truth as 
"The mind is a force of growth," when rightly appro- 
priated will assist in this process and cannot be appro- 
priated without symbolism. A mind that, seeing a yellow 
simflower by the brook, sees a yellow sunflower and nothing 
more should stay away from children. The schoolrooms 
do not need rainbow chasers, but devotees of Iris who 
uncover their heads in adoration when she drops her cur- 
tains of seven colors athwart the sky which canopies the 
schoolhouse. Blades of grass or massive elms are not 
specimens merely of herb or tree, but of growing things 
pulsating with life akin to all life, subject to law like man, 
and calling for mind to study and know them and thus 
know itself. Symbolize, force yourself to see that 

*' Sweet are the uses of adversity, 
Which, hke the toad, ugly and venomous. 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; 
And this our life exempt from public haunt 
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks. 
Sermons in stones and good in every thing. " 

Shakspere knew that if he knew God's world in part he 
would know it in whole; Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Dante, 
Leonardo, Savonarola, Froebel, Mann, Arnold, Harper, 
Moses, Eliot, Lincoln, Christ, all great teachers, knew with 
Tennyson : 

*' Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies; — 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is. *' 

Christ, the master teacher, so appreciated the truth 
that mind is a force of growth that He found in vine and 



32 GROWING A LIFE 

seed, fig tree and growing corn, brooding fowl and wander- 
ing sheep, lessons of soul-growth the world will not cease 
repeating because the simplicity of God's law and sym- 
bolism make them perfect. Is it not astonishing that so 
many of earth's teachers have sat at His feet, yet so few 
have gone away brave enough and bold enough to wrest 
from common things their secrets and give them to the 
children? 

A beautiful picture is presented as this Teacher and this 
truth are connected. Simple as a cliild, majestic as a king, 
low of voice, with healing in His touch, the people of Gali- 
lee, His children, have learned to revere Him and to need 
Him. They have come down to the sea — the old, because 
He is so tender with tradition ; the middle-aged, because He 
is so buoyant with promise; and the trooping children, 
because He actually saves the most blessed spot for them, 
— His knees, — and then He talks of birds and bees, of 
com and vines, like those about their own homes. 

They are so interested, so eager, they can hardly v/ait for 
the lesson to begin. They press close, so close His school- 
room must be readjusted. With a smile he enters a little 
boat, pushes out, and swings arotmd so close to shore every 
one can see and hear and, as a lesson-giver should be. He 
is near yet removed from all. 

He begins to speak, and the sweetness of the lov/, mellow 
tones silences all murmur. "Harken." More of gentle 
address, than admonition. "Behold, a sower went forth 
to sow. ' * As the teacher speaks, a smile of triimiph flashes 
over the class, as if they said, "We know it. He tells us 
of the beautiful life in everyday terms." There, living in 
them, not Himself, He sits as the soft ripples lap the boat. 
Beneath a roof of blue sky, with the seashore for recitation 
bench and a boat for desk, this teacher of mankind by 



MIND AND GROWTH 33 

His thought leads these children up the edge of the dusty 
waysides, over their stony fields, and along the waste 
places, scattering seed. They know His life and the seed 
He sows. He knows their lives and the seed they sow. 
What need for explanation? 

The lesson over, they go quietly away, realizing that to 
sow seed of mind or soul is to plant under precisely the 
same law as when sowing wheat or barley. And just as 
the seed needs the dew and the rain, the soil and the sun 
to enable it to spring forth from darkness into the glory 
and beauty of full fruition, so that which is sown in the 
fertile soil of the child's mind and soul must be refreshed 
by life-giving streams of thought, and warmed and nur- 
tured by daily contact with the penetrating light which 
radiates from the Master Teacher, until ripe for the great 
ingathering of life's harvest. 



CHAPTER y 

CONSCIOUSNESS 

IN the learning of all matter, we have to start with some 
one deep aspect of the question, abstracting it as if 
it were the only aspect, and then we gradually correct 
ourselves by adding those neglected other features which 
complete the case," says Dr. William James. 

We have started with the accepted truth that Nature 
is the one true teacher. We have been told by her that 
this universe is a thing of law. We have seen her point 
to the unbroken thread running through the material, 
the vegetable, the animal, and the mental, and establish 
the law of all laws, continuity. Under this law we have 
sought to know mind, and have traced it to the world 
of force. Continuing the quest, we have been brought 
closer to mind by finding it in the sphere of those life- 
forces marked by growth. Following the same highway, 
and with the same guide, let us approach still nearer. 

It has been said that the year 1858 has an especial grip 
on history. That year saw the beginning of the Standard 
Oil Company, and in that year Cyrus Field laid his first 
ocean cable, and Charles Darwin began to preach the doc- 
trine of the origin of species. While no doubt the first 
two events have left their impress upon commercialism and 
transportation for all time, still, outreaching both of these 
because reshaping and liberating human thought, the 
parent of both, stands the work of Charles Darwin. The 
greatness of this work in no way consisted in the number 
of truths presented, but in the fact that it gave thought 
a truer process and a broader basis than before known. 

34 



CONSCIOUSNESS 35 

When the law of natural selection was declared it was 
thought to pertain only to a narrow sphere of reasoning. 
But it has been found useful in all operations of thought. In 
making observations in continents, in both hemispheres, it 
was noticed that while such types as the elephant and 
giraffe flourished in one continent, in another, wdthin the 
same latitude, they were non-existent, and not even re- 
mains of their life in fossil form could be found. This 
strange gap of Nature could be explained only by an 
equivalent projection of environment, due to life-forces 
which, swept on to ease, finally met vicissitude, and per- 
ished. Struck by hazardous environment, set upon by 
tooth and claw of enemies, there was a struggle among 
forces, and naturally the survival of the fittest followed. 

What mental or moral principles were involved in this 
contest? Not any. Existence was the end* in view, and 
battle the thought. Fonn crowded form and specie 
fought with specie for place and food. It was a stubborn 
contest with justice and sympathy playing no part. 
Mercy and altruism were unknown. The misshapen, 
the feeble, were soon swept aside, and perished. 

Yet in all this there was growth, there was plan, for 
within it and of it instinct was born. Life, the vital 
energy of growth, had seized the protoplasm, the physical 
agent of life, and was moving it in certain fixed lines. 
W^hen this substance met a resistance greater than itself 
it adapted itself to the situation, altering either its rate 
or its course. This being done often, the changes in the 
movement of the protoplasm became established and 
the creature became specialized to suit his environment. 
Thus the movements of this life-agent were ground into 
the very fiber of the being, became fixed characteristics 
of the individuals of that type, and instinctive in their 



36 GROWING A LIFE 

offspring. This must result, since the offspring were 
formed from and were a part of the parent. 

Through this process of vital energy the world was 
fixed under an inexorable law of routine or habit. The 
earth, subjected to the great forces of attraction and 
repulsion, settled into a Mississippi basin or broke into an 
Alpine crest. Through this process Nature taught the 
mole to burrow and his brother, the squirrel, to climb; 
the eagle to soar and the duck to swim. No swerving 
from the course, no comparison by the sparrow of his 
song of to-day with that of yesterday. Blind obedience 
to instinct everywhere; no remembrance, no imagination, 
no emotion, no will anywhere. Up to this time the mind 
has had nothing to do with the process. All has been 
done by the life-energy of God. 

Nature has been defined as a projection or creation of 
God in order to reveal Himself unto Himself and unto 
His creatures. This interpretation reveals the brain as a 
mass or projection of fibers, or centers of association, 
whose function is the reception and recording of the higher 
sense products conducted thither by the special sense 
organ. Here in the association centers of the brain the 
mind meets the material world. Just here, if we mark 
its decisive phenomenon, v/e shall find mind's chief differ- 
entiation from other forces and, as teachers, may seize 
one of its vital principles. 

There is a close analogy between the mind's relation 
to the brain and that of a musician to his instrument. 
The pianist is no part of the piano; neither is the mind 
a part of the brain. The different keys are touched 
by the performer, and exquisite hannony results. The 
localized cells of the brain, diversified, resemble the keys 
of an instrument when touched, giving rise to the bodily 



CONSCIOUSNESS 37 

movement. In the lower animals an impulse is sent out 
by the special sense organ. This is carried by the pro- 
jection fibers to certain localities of the brain designed 
to receive such sensations. Thence it is reflected to an 
association center where it is translated into a stimulus. 
This stimulus tends to produce action in the parts whose 
motor functions are localized there. 

In man all this takes place and something more. When 
the vibration from the sense organs passes to the associa- 
tion centers, as in the lower animals, it is in part reflected 
to the motor centers, where it may act as a stimulus, and 
in part it acts upon the mind, which instantaneously 
remembers, imagines, reasons, and wills. Thus mind has 
a reactionary power. This power is consciousness. The 
mind-force differs from all forces of growth in this, that 
it is a conscious growing thing. 

A modem w^riter has said that man differs from all 
other creatures in that he only can sit in the grandstand 
and see himself march by. The bird sings but knows not 
that it sings; the child laughs and knows that it laughs. 
At this point the mind of man releases itself from mate- 
rial bearings and moves out into unending, unceasing 
growth. We think a thought, and consciousness as mem- 
ory marshals yesterday's thought alongside; comparison 
is made, and a new thought is born. 

Let the teacher in the schoolroom and the home follow 
the process by which vital energy in the growth-world 
yields at last to the pecuHar characteristic of mental 
growth, consciousness. By all means let trainers of chil- 
dren lift up their eyes to the blessings attendant on child- 
hood work w^hen mind as a conscious growing thing is 
properly appreciated. 

There is no growth, no mind, where the consciousness 



38 GROWING A LIFE 

is not touched; there is no impression upon mind unless 
correlative expression is there to record it. It is like 
knocking on the door of a house where the inmates are 
deaf. No action is worthy of the term which does not 
report to the mental consciousness for comparison and 
reaction. Here only is the "articulation wath one's 
environments"; here only is life. If the ears are not 
knov/ing, conscious ears then you had as well speak to 
cold, insensate bmtes. If the eyes see to-day yet never 
consciously record that it is different from yesterday, then 
the child is blinder than those who, their optic nerves 
destroyed, have learned to make the sense of touch do 
double duty. In short, teaching is the conscious effort to 
place the mind in conscious touch with its environment 
so that the best possibilities may be obtained for reaction 
toward conscious high ideals. 

When you look upon the multitude of schoolrooms filled 
with children possessed with conscious powers yet sitting 
hour after hour in dull routine, having eyes that see not 
and ears that hear not, you want to write over the door 
of every such schoolroom, "Treat these children, O 
teachers, as though mind were a conscious growing thing." 
If devotional service has the beginning ten minutes, 
choose the morning song because it tells of the season 
expressed in autumn's varied colors all about them or 
in the verdant carpet of spring spread just without the 
schoolroom doors. If the Bible story comes next, 
awaken memory, stimulate judgment, by first relating 
a companion story, permitting some few questions, and 
then move off into the reading of one of the psalms of 
David or songs of Solomon with a spirit so appreciative, 
so centered in the consciousness that you must awaken 
minds before you, that it will lift your head, distend your 



CONSCIOUSNESS 39 

nostrils as for a great breath of life, kindle your eyes to 
altars of love, and arouse your children to a sense of 
appreciation of the li^4ng truth as thus written and 
expressed. 

The recitation comes. How the bow of promise bends 
above the teacher who knows that she is dealing wdth 
conscious growth! Tests are made with quizzing and 
examination. Now the figures are cast up and there is 
the evidence of gro\\i;h. But there is something better 
than figures by which to rate improvement. It is the 
child's measure of himself through consciousness. There 
are some beautiful displays from Nature's seven-hued 
paint box. Aurora ushers in the day beneath a canopy 
rich with Tyrian purple and damask rose. Apollo at 
his zenith beholds an earth beneath him resplendent in 
color. Nox, sable goddess from her ebon throne, throws 
a rich drapery of dazzling hues athwart the setting sun. 
But not one of these sends forth a ray so swift, so beauti- 
ful, or so divine as that which lights the eye of a child 
when it realizes its own growth. On the other hand, 
the saddest, most condemning sight in any place where 
children live is the unconscious, lack-luster eye; recitation 
benches full of dull, listless minds — minds weighted by 
long hours, unwholesome curriculum, incompetent instruc- 
tion, and the thoughtlessness of unseeing parents — minds, 
unconscious, unthinking, unfeeling, caught in the meshes 
of expressionless existence. 

Have you not seen the successful teacher wdth quick, 
elastic tread step before a group of children and with 
vivacity, keen understanding, and rare discrimination 
assign tasks fitted to each? **Mary, you may take that 
problem because you are mistress of the situation. John, 
you may have that one, because it is a knotty test, and 



40 GROWING A LIFE 

you have proved yourself an untangler of knots. Nellie, 
take this. Very well, if you do not see it clearly now, 
you will to-morrow, and you know the worth of 'try.' '* 
Thus the clear- voiced, well-balanced leader directs her 
little army. Every captain assigned a responsible posi- 
tion in the field of thought, every volunteer incited by the 
appreciative word and the remembered smile of approval 
(and memories of the white-faced, calm, but outraged 
leader one day ordering a pupil from the ranks for con- 
duct unbecoming a soldier), the command rings out, 
" Proceed to work. " With pencil and chalk for bayonets 
and swords, watch them spring to the happiest contest 
known, a mental battle. Figtues fly thick and fast, the 
outposts of thought are met and driven back, and in a 
little while uplifted hands like flags are waving over the 
conquered citadels of truth. But there is one problem 
no one can solve. They have stormed this bulwark with 
might and main. This the teacher notes with sympathy 
and admiration, and at last says, " I shall work this for you. 
I can take the fort. " The conscious power of the class is 
roused, and in part or in whole it exclaims, "No, please, 
teacher, give us another chance. Do not do it for us; 
we can conquer it. '* 

The clim.ax of good teaching rests in this. But is 
such work ever done? Yes, it is done in thousands of 
schoolrooms in America. It was done, memory true and 
joyous assures us, in a little backwoods village in Kentucky 
years ago by an unknown schoolmaster who never heard 
of psychology and had read but little of fixed pedagogy, 
but who was a thinker, a toiler, and every inch a man. 

In this discussion some things may be said that might 
be construed as disparaging the merits and the study of 
psychology. Far from it. Every time a master work 



CONSCIOUSNESS 41 

on this subject is bequeathed to learning by a Hegel, 
a Kant, a Spencer, or a James it gives strength, inspira- 
tion, and impetus to civilization. But there is a greater 
strength, a sublimer inspiration, in the teacher herself, 
as, resting her view upon a few simple laws of Nature, 
the only psychology worth while, she remembers that 
in dealing with a pupil "divination and perception, not 
psychological pedagogics or theoretic strategy, are her 
real helpers." 

Let us quote further from Dr. James on this point: 
" I say it once more that in my humble opinion there is no 
new psychology worthy of the name. There is nothing 
but the old psychology which began in Locke's time plus 
a Httle psychology of the brain and the senses and theory 
of evolution and a few refinements of introspective detail 
for the most part without adaptation to the teacher's use. 
It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology 
which are of real value to the teacher, and they, apart 
from the aforesaid theory or evolution, are very far from 
being new. . . . Psychology is a science, and teach- 
ing is an art. . . . An intermediary, inventive mind 
must make the application by using its originality. . . . 
The art of teaching grew up in the schoolroom out of 
inventiveness, and concrete observation. . . . The 
worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get 
a bad conscience about her profession because she feels 
herself hopeless as a psychologist. Our teachers are over- 
worked already. " 

It would be well if these words of wisdom were given a 
prominent place on every schoolroom wall. It would be 
better if they could be knotted into a club, a scoiu*ge like 
that used in the temple by the Master Teacher, and in 
the hands of a live soul be used to drive dead rote from 



42 GROWING A LIFE 

the schoolrooms, craniining and stultification from our 
summer normals or institutes (summer abnomials many 
should be called) and higher courses for teachers. Truths 
like this should impel all who serve children directly or 
indirectly to the conclusion that the mind is a conscious 
growing thing and that it takes a soul conscious of its 
own task and powers to awaken it. 

We need not know so much of some things that occupy 
the school day; at least, we need not take them with 
such frightful literalness. Better the wonder, the sweet 
mystery, of the primal mind. Better far at times to 
let sink into the heart the Upper Spirit, common to man 
whose operations Wordsworth describes as he says: 

"The world is too much with us; late and soon, 

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: 

Little we see in Nature that is ours; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 

The winds that will be howling at all hours, 

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; 
For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 

It moves us not. — Great God! I'd rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. " 

The cry is for larger teachers and smaller books; more 
pages of spirit and less of matter; barriers of rostrum, 
chart, and texts broken down and thought spealcing 
from mind to mind. "Don't, teacher, don't tell that!" 
cries a little boy, as \vith imagination roused, the teacher 
tells of the retreat of the ragged, shoeless Continentals 
over ice and snow, leaving heroism written in footprints 



CONSCIOUSNESS 43 

of blood from bruised and mangled feet. /'What is the 
matter, my child?'* asks the teacher. "Oh I" said the 
little man, "it hurts my feet so to hear you tell that 
story. '* 

Do you know strong, rugged truths, and when your 
pupils are gathered around you can you send them hot 
from your soul to theirs? A man bums a steel rod in 
oxygen. It is a wonderful sight to see the vi\ad sparks 
of tense metal fall before the flame Hke thread shriveled 
in a burning grate. It is still more wonderful when, 
looking in the glass vessel which held the experiment, 
you see bits of steel imbedded therein. Moulten hot it 
flew, melted what it fell upon, and was forever imbedded 
in it. *'So many little books are read there is no time for 
the great books. It is reading, spelling, parsing, arith- 
metic, and the rest of the succession, until w^e become 
'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,* and the 
grand proportions of teacherhood are lost. Yet the worst 
remains to be said. It is this. Behold, our children grow 
Hke us.'* 

In an article, "Our Poet of Nature as I Remember Him, " 
Mrs. Henrietta M. Nahmer vividly describes conscious 
teaching: "Not far from the birthplace of Bryant, 
v/hich is marked by a plain monolith of granite, and on 
the same ridge v/here the Bryant homestead commands 
a view of the Hampshire hills for miles, there stood in tlie 
fifties a Httle red schoolhouse so completely hidden in 
the forest that the stranger could not know of its existence 
until close upon it. Here was the typical New England 
school of that date; and while as yet no modem methods 
had crept in to disturb the somewhai dull serenity of 
teacher and pupil, there v>^as, once a day at least, a detour 
into byways where one might associate with the great 



44 GROWING A LIFE 

ones of literature, and in the daily reading of selections 
from the English classics was begun that education which 
Matthew Arnold defines as the highest culture, *the 
knowledge of the best that has been said and thought in 
all ages.* Instead of the commonplace by which so many 
children of to-day are nourished, the youth of that time 
were spelUng out lofty themes from Cowper, the smooth 
verse of Addison, and the repose and dignity of Gray's 
Elegy in a Country Chttrchyard. What matters if the 
philosophy and insight of the glorious bursts of Thana- 
topsis were beyond the reach of our comprehension; the 
rolling measure of its cadences was music to our ears, 
even then stirring to the harmonies of the universe. ** 

This scene presents some values of conscious growth 
being assimilated. Let us study it and as far as prac- 
ticable, in home and schoolroom, profit by the example. 



CHAPTER VI 
SELF-ACTIVITY 

EVERY worthy movement of the world has found its 
nourishment rooted in the soil of philanthropy. 
Philanthropy is just a bundle of syllables hiding the 
idea of love — love, robbed of lust and divorced from 
infatuation; love of a m.an for his brother man. Philan- 
thropy is incarnated in self-sacrifice. " Greater love hath 
no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his 
friends . ' * Who is your friend , your neighbor ? "A certain 
man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among 
thieves," — you know the rest of the story. Therein we 
find the answer to our question. How this conception of 
the beautiful life has widened from the individual into the 
family, from family to tribe, from tribe to state, from state 
to confederacy, from confederacy to a perpetual union, 
and from federated empires into Hague international 
tribunals, furnishes the heart's true hope for the fulfill- 
ment of the Tennyson prophecy: 

"Till the war-druni throbb'd no longer, and the battle-ila^a 
were furl'd 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." 

While we are appreciating this truth we may as well 
state that philanthropy has prospered because it pays. 
If you have noticed. Nature is a good business woman. 
She propagates no grain, no horse, no man, or no idea 
unless it pays. Found your business upon principles 
opposed to Nature's laws and you may choose between 
bankruptcy or another begimiing. The shrewdest men 
of the world, the business men, know this to be true. 

45 



46 GROWING A LIFE 

This thing of getting only for yourself has about gone out 
of style, except among failures. This old world is geared 
upon the notch, get for the other fellow also or you will 
not get at all. That is what Wendell Phillips meant when 
he said to the soft-cheeked lawmakers at Washington: 
"Build your Capitol of marble and granite, heaven high, 
yet found it upon wrong and the *pulse-beats of an 
intelHgent schoolgirl will in time reduce it to dust.' " 

Education as a movement is no exception to this law. 
In all ages educators have been the greatest apostles of 
philanthropy, altruism, and divine love. The largest 
enterprises, the greatest efforts to enlarge the joys and 
liberties of men, have been founded upon and conducted 
through teaching. Moses was a true lawgiver, because 
he read in the eyes of his suffering people every law he 
v/rote upon the holy mountain. Socrates taught from 
the lascivious but artistic youth in the market place that 
Greece was dying of luxmy and avarice, and so preached 
the message of simplicity, though for this he lost his life. 
Christ is altruism incarnate. *'The Shepherd will give 
his life for his sheep. '* As a teacher he did give his life 
for his school. There was then, and there is now, no 
other way. 

Pestalozzi, Froebel, Horace Mann, William T. Harris, 
Franci§ W. Parker — what an unbroken succession of 
philanthropists! Into the garden where children, the 
hope of the world, were growing neglected, misunderstood, 
entered these great kindergartners. To teach theory — 
books? Yes, a little, but more to bestow smiles and hope 
and food and play and thought and love. Have they 
successors among the living? At once memory calls into 
being a picture. Behold a building lighted from pit to 
dome by a thousand lamps and still furthei illumined by 



SELF'ACTIVITY ' 47 

the thousands of intelligent eyes focused upon the stage. 
Expectancy tiptoe in the streets, in the corridors, and 
in the aisles abated not as now it sat awaiting the words 
of Nathan C. Schaffer, the President of the National 
Education Association of America. Leader as he was, 
they cared nothing for what he would say. The mind 
leaps any barrier to pay deference to an idea. That 
idea, embodied in a splendid trinity of womanhood, sat 
upon the stage. The largest educational assembly of 
the world had gathered to pay deference to three of the 
world's good women, whom it called teachers: Jane 
Addams, Ella Flagg Young, and Sarah L. Arnold. 

It was a memorable occasion because it marked another 
milestone in human progress. The fall of Fort Sumter 
was not great as a battle, but it put an issue to the test. 
Waterloo was not a battle. **It was the facing about 
of the universe." This was no program offered by this 
trio of women educators, but an equalization of the scales 
of justice, a triumph of woman over time and circumstance. 
How the brute force that had circumvented, foiled, and 
crushed the woman of ages past would have scowled 
had it beheld the mind of woman thus enthroned ! 

They spoke, but it was not what they said but what 
they were that attracted. They were exponents of the 
greatest educational idea thus far generated or discovered. 
Every idea of philanthropy sent forth from Hull House, 
every method pursued at the Chicago Normal College, and 
every kindergarten plan in the Boston public schools was 
dominated by this principle : * * The mind is naturally self- 
active." All teachers and home makers should hear 
this truth, receive it, and analyze it. 

In Boston, in 1903, Miss Arnold said: "It has always 
seemed strange to me that man went searching so long 



48 GROWING A LIFE 

for the di\dnest principle of education, when it lay always 
at his very feet." That principle was the self -activity 
of mind. She was right. Nature, the infallible inter- 
preter of natural law, reveals, along with the truth that 
mind is a force of growth, that all growth is naturally 
self -active. Go take Hf e in the germ , in the grain of wheat , 
in the acorn. Can you add to or subtract from the 
potential life wdthin? Pare with knife or crush with 
stone, the shell alone you mutilate. You may wreck 
environment of the life principle of a snail or of a man, 
but the vital principle, or the mind-principle, you cannot 
touch. You can bring all of the elements of an egg 
together in the chemical kingdom, but no wizard of the 
laboratory has been able to compound the Hfe principle 
of that egg. 

To the teacher this is at once a sure guide and bless- 
ing. It says, God has furnished mind. With that mind 
per se you have nothing to do. The work is finished, and 
finished by a master hand ; it is not to be touched directly. 
Environment is on one side ready to assist you with the 
influences you wield; on the other side stands heredity. 
These two, "heredity and environment," explains Drum- 
mond, "are the two master forces of the organic world. " 
Not only of the child-world but of the whole organic or 
growth kingdom; then, proceeding from this, Drummond 
hurls out a system of pedagogy in a paragraph. It is so 
fundamental, it is so plain and practical, that every worker 
with children should appropriate it. 

** These have made us what we are. These forces are 
still ceaselessly playing upon all of our lives. And he 
who truly imderstands these influences; he w^ho has 
decided how much to allow to each; he who can regulate 
new forces as they arise or adjust them to the old, so 



SELF-ACTIVITY 49 

directing them as at one moment to make them cooperate, 
at another to counteract one another, understands the 
rationale of personal development. To seize continu- 
ously the opportunity of more and more perfect adjust- 
ment to better and higher conditions, to balance some 
inward evil with some pmrer influence acting from with- 
out, in a word to make our environment at the same time 
that it is making us, these are the secrets of a well-ordered 
and a successful life." 

Let us as teachers and parents recast this paragraph. 
Heredity and environment make the child what he is. 
These forces are ceaselessly playing upon his life. The 
teacher or parent who truly understands these influences, 
— the teacher or parent who has decided how much to 
allow to each, — the teacher or parent who can regulate 
new forces for us as they arise or adjust them to the old, 
so directing them as at one moment to make them coop- 
erate, at another to counteract one another, imderstands 
the rationale of child development. To seize continu- 
ously the opportimity of more and more perfect adjust- 
ment to better and higher conditions, to balance some 
inward evil with some purer influence acting from without ; 
in a word, to permit and assist the child to make its 
environment at the same time that environment is making 
the child; these are the secrets of well-ordered and suc- 
cessful child-growth. 

, Beginning with heredity, which is all things that have 
gone before, we would begin the instruction of the child, 
as Dr. Holmes suggested, hundreds of years before it is 
bom. Since that is beyond us, we must leave heredity 
save as a study of what this child inherited from the 
past, to be modified and shaped by the present. We 
cannot go back of the blood corpuscle. The pupil sits 
4 



50 GROWING A LIFE 

before us as representative of his mother, his father, his 
grandparents, and millions of other ancestral forces. 
Is his speech not clear? Wait, a hundred years or more 
of uncultiu-ed tongues speak through his. Is his form 
misshapen, his eye dull, his mind enfeebled? Remember, 
you saw his father and grandfather yesterday, and he is a 
part of a starved, degenerate force. Be patient, and with 
dexterous hand present the picture, guide the crayon, 
exercise the feeble joints, feed the famished body, break 
away the clogs and fetters until the pent-up mind, freed, 
escapes the barren environment, and from the poorhouse 
boy of Wales we shall have a Stanley, a world explorer. 

Study environment, look close upon that which lies 
about the child. Ask many teachers to name the envi- 
ronment closest to the mind, and such answers as these 
will be given: the air, the home, the schoolroom. 
There are three important divisions of socius or environ- 
ment. The material "me," made up of such factors as 
body, clothes, and home; the social "me," including such 
elements as companions and school scenery ; and the spir- 
itual "me," including such influences as church and 
Sunday school. These are the avenues by which mind 
is approached. Texts, along which teachers too con- 
stantly move, are narrow bypaths contrasted with the 
broad, nature-adorned highways, the body or home of 
the child. Along these ways the physician, the medical 
inspector, pure-food commissions, playground associations, 
and physical training director are moving with gifts of 
better throats, better eyes, better bodies, and better 
food in better homes, all to make the body give the mind 
a better chance. 

"I have missed Nellie for the last two days," said a 
teacher. "Yes," said the friend addressed, "she came 



SELF- ACTIVITY . .51 

from school one day in a nervous collapse and has not 
recovered. You know, she suflers from a spinal weakness. 
She must have received a shock of a severe nature, for 
she has suffered since with nervous rigors that have verged 
on catalepsy. I fear her school days are over for a year 
or more." Consulting the record book, and comparing 
the entry with the friend's statement, the teacher dis- 
covered the day of * ' shock ' ' was the day a decided ' * shake ' * 
was given Nellie because she was fidgety in class. 

It would be well if the teachers could know the health, 
the bodily environment, of the child before these decided 
"shakes" take place. Instead of tests on number, make 
sometimes a test for adenoids. Substitute for examina- 
tions in grammar an examination of teeth. Instead of 
using your watch in a race in quick addition, make a 
test in quick hearing, accurate breathing, and skilled 
acting. Instead of continually criticizing idle, listless 
children, give them a critical sight test and report to the 
parent and physician how, when, and w^here. By a 
thousand devices born of faith, it is your mission to bring 
life and bring it more abundantly to the child. This 
must be done to-da}^ for we know not what to-morrow 
may bring forth. Here in your own schoolroom, whose 
area is unrestricted because its roof is the blue dome of 
heaven, this work must go on. 

True, we seem to be losing sight of our great natural 
principle. Mind is naturally self-active. Yet excuse is 
not needed nor asked, inasmuch as environment is nearer 
to mind than breathing, " and closer than hands and feet. " 
It is even less sentiment than scientific fact to say that 
modem mind training discovers that the dismal gap 
between school and home must be bridged. "James," 
said the irate teacher, "I believe that you are the worst 



52 GROWING A LIFE 

boy I ever saw." "Oh," said James with a knowing 
curl of the lip, "you just ought to hear what Ma says 
about you. " 

Too often this little piece of active flesh, "James," 
is the only exchange in the big educational system con- 
necting home and school. To carry the figure further, is 
it any wonder, when you come to think of the common 
toil, the common authority, and the exceedingly common 
ideals centering in James, that he gets his wires crossed? 
Between the vicious home, the undeveloped child, and 
the poor teaclier, and the good home, the normal child, 
and the strong teacher every problem of education is 
included. Home may be to those children in front of 
you tragedy or comedy, love or hate, control or license, 
education or neglect, heaven or hell. 

A teacher tells a story of a visitor coming to her school- 
room one day. She had the children tell some stories 
for his pleasiue. One hand, though it wore the dirt of 
neglect and was attached to a body clothed all too scantily 
for comfort, would not down. The little fellow arose, 
and with as much light of eye as the self-active flame 
could shed within its restricted niche, told the story of 
the Pied Piper of Hamelin. "On they went," he said, 
"on they went right into the moimtain; just as the last 
little boy got in, the mountain shut up, that quick." 
And he clapped his little hands together, his face lighting 
with an extra glow. "And the little boys and girls were 
shut up in the moimtain and never had to go home no 
more. They found pretty woods and rivers, and played 
all the time, and never had to go home no more. Oh, it 
was no nice, and just think, they never had to go home 
no more." The teacher forgot everything except the 
little waif's graphic description of his own home, and in 



SELF-ACTIVITY S3 

the gnawing pity for his stricken life she wept. Who 
doubts it ? Not a teacher, not a lover of humanity possess- 
ing mind and heart. This dethroned, deflected, and dis- 
mally environed soul is closer to us than we know. Riches 
as well as poverty create it. Excess as often as starvation 
mothers it. But there it is, and la>4ng aside the text, 
let us with unremitting persistence cut loose from the 
enfeebling falsities and supply imprisoned, divinely self- 
active mind a passageway to the true nobleness it seeks. 
Bring in the sunshine and calcimine. Pitch out 
switches, and hang up Peny pictiures. Lower the rostrum, 
the teacher's symbol of separation, and elevate the 
American flag. Drop the pointer, and take up the paint 
brush, chanting with your children as they rub on the 
japalac, 

"Little beds of flowers, little coats of paint. 
Make a pretty schoolhouse out of one that ain't." 

Push out with longing and laughter, created by story- 
telling, song, and love, the sides of the hot old school- 
house, and go forth into the meadow and count the clover 
blossoms, the primroses, and the blue hills. "Define 
ferment," said a teacher to a class of fidgety youngsters 
lined up for spelling at the end of a two hours' stay 
indoors on a hot April afternoon. "You may use it in 
a sentence, if you wish." One little fellow out of the 
abimdance of his heart availed himself of the privilege 
and wrote: "I had rather play outdoors in April than 
ferment in the schoolhouse." Who doubts that this 
little boy understood the meaning of the word? Dig 
and grade, plant and protect the school yards imtil on 
cool stretches of green swards, bordered by violets and 
brightened by climips of lilacs, sunflowers, and elms, you 



54 GROWING A LIFE 

can see laughing, merry, joyous children playing, while 
in fancy Froebel's spirit brooding over all whispers, "This 
is my child's garden. " 

Whatever the struggle environment and heredity may 
bring, there is always a great force working with us. The 
steam does not spring with greater alacrity to push from 
out its pathway 3rielding piston and whirling v/heel than 
mind leaps to break dowTi the barriers of abnormalism. 
The subtle force along the electric wire is as a child's 
breath in power and runs but slowly compared with 
mind as it darts through limpid blood and pain-racked 
frame up through wrong and on until it almost thinks 
the thoughts of God. Lovers of children should never 
forget that mind in its self -activity fights w4th them, 
and that like all of Nature's forces it is greater than 
they and all their texts and theories. 

This is Nature's plea for personality — so plain that he 
who runs may read. What is personality? The way in 
which mind reacts when in contact with its environment. 
If reaction has some way peculiar to itself, we call this 
individuality; if not, we call it mediocrity, or do not 
name it at all. But thoughtless, opinionated, ill 
balanced minds call individuality, or mind reacting in a 
way peculiarly its own, impertinence, pride, or wrong. 
They begin to right it, and then there is a battle between 
mind and mind. Squeers is not the only master that 
used his school as a thing to sit upon. Too much to-day 
do we behold in the schools of the land the children boxed 
in text and routine, latched by the teacher's personality, 
and king teacher, with triimiphant mien, sitting on the lid. 

"Children, will you tell me," said the visiting super- 
intendent, "how many are three peaches and four 
peaches?" The little upturned faces looked sweetly at 



SELF-ACTIVITY $$ 

him, but their tongues were still. Once more the ques- 
tion was urged, and just as the silence grew ominous 
the good man asked, "What is it, little girl?'* ''Please, 
sir," said the little girl, "we do them in apples, not in 
peaches," and every little head bobbed in accord. 

That superintendent found some moldy fruit being 
served to childhood, but he was not alone in his discovery. 
The little man who replied when asked the shape of the 
earth, "Round like an apple on the week day, and like 
a snuffbox on Sunday, " was only repeating what had been 
told him. Teacher had said, "Thou shalt have no other 
God of thought before me. What I tell you is to be taken 
and, mind, there is to be no looking into the spoon." 
The only trouble was, the teacher could not be everywhere, 
both in day school and Sunday school. Teachers shift, 
but all they say to the child is true. So out comes the 
snuffbox of the new teacher on Sunday, up goes the apple 
theory until Monday, and down goes the child through 
such training into mental slavery. 

In a schoolroom one day a class in history was called. 
Noble faces, sturdy, finely proportioned limbs, and 
intelligence above the ordinary marked the group as they 
swung into their places. The teacher was a neatly 
dressed, dark-eyed young man pleasing in speech and 
manner. They were summing up some biographical 
values. Topics had been assigned for special investiga- 
tion. "The next topic," said the teacher, "is assigned 
James." Instantly a fine chap arose and said it had 
been given to him to tell of a certain character. In 
pleasing tones and inviting speech for one so young he 
outlined the life of an eminent statesman. At last he 
said: "It seems to me this was an honest man. He 
acted for the best interests of his people." As he 



56 GROWING A LIFE 

approached this point the class shifted restlessly in their 
places and looked with quick glances at the teacher. It 
was plainly to be seen that "coming events cast their 
shadows before." The dark eyes of the teacher grew 
darker, his brow knotted, and his hands tmtched. The 
class seemed to know what this meant. The word 
"Stop!" rang out. The lad raised his head as nearly on 
a level with the teacher's as he could and waited. "You 
say from what you gather this was an honest man. Where 
did you get such an opinion?" "From history," replied 
the boy. "Where do you find it there?" "In all of the 
histories that are worth anything," answered the lad. 
"Name one, and cite the page and line," commanded the 
teacher in a voice full of passion. "They may not say 
so in exact words or on a certain page, but it is intimated 
everywhere," said the lad. "Name the book and the 
page, or sit down," said the teacher with fire in his 
eyes. The boy, pale but undaunted, said sturdily: "In 
talking last night with my father this was his opinion 
also. " " Ah ! " said the irate teacher, ' ' there is where you 
found it. No, young man, this character is not worthy 
of respect, and I want you to understand that in this 
schoolroom, as long as I am here, I do not want any of 
yoiu* or your father's opinions to the contrary. If you 
bring them here you do so at yovir peril." 

This scene is as vivid in memory as if enacted yesterday 
rather than twelve years ago. And over the straightening 
of young shoulders and glances of startled S3mipathy for 
a comrade wotmded on the battle field of thought, over 
the picture of the schoolmaster with the cruel bludgeon 
of an imbalanced mind, upraised to strike a blow to 
honest conviction, stands out the figtu-e of the boy. 
Respectfully silent he stood, yet the pale face, quivering 



SELF-ACTIVITY 57 

nostrils, and unabashed blue eyes cried aloud as in thunder 
tones: "Teacher, you have wounded my individuality 
sorely. It is all I have to help me to success. You have 
not killed it to-day, but beware. The weakness of years, 
my blood's respect for authority, and the demand of my 
home decree that I meet you regardless of suffering, but 
I entreat you to give my self-activity, my personaHty, a 
chance to live. ,. Teacher, in the name of the larger life, 
spare me." 

In a greater or less degree this tragedy is being enacted 
in schoolrooms and homes every hotir. Teachers, 
mothers, and fathers consciously or unconsciously too 
often play the role of this misguided, ignorant teacher. 
History would have told him: Be steady, this life you 
discuss is only an effect, not a cause. Such men no more 
caused the effects for which you condemn them than the 
overflow of rivers caused the rain that choked their banks. 
These men were only so much flotsam and jetsam on the 
river of human progress. True, the crest of an historical 
wave caught such a man and threw him into special 
prominence. This is plain even to a child. Wherefore 
your spleen, wherefore your imwillingness to confess 
that any searching after truth should be treated with 
respect? Beware how mind gets set. "Very positive 
men," says a profound thinker and writer of good peda- 
gogy, "have a great need of being very right, otherwise 
they may be very wrong. " 

For centuries self-activity has been the active principle 
of educational enterprise. It created the kindergarten 
and shaped the normal school. It has cleansed, purified, 
and rendered acceptable the public-school curriculum. 
It has, like a veritable life sap, crept from point to 
point up the educational systems imtil the public school, 



58 GROWING A LIFE 

high school, nonnal school, college, university, and home 
find in it "the thread that doth all unite." It is the 
natural law upon which the trichotomy of education — 
the head, the hand, and the heart — has encircled the child, 
lifting him to intellectual liberty. It is the founder of 
training schools and of modern industriaHsm. It is 
striking dead the old fetish that grind, grind, grind of 
memory and little more is education. It is the mother 
of handicrafts, which is doing for the boyhood of America 
what Colimibus did for the Europe of his day — furnishing 
the other half of the world. 

The self-active mind, ever ready, ever willing, ever 
anxious, has given the teachers just one thing to do. 
Just one, let it be repeated, and that is, to work on the 
child's environment. It has simplified because it has 
diversified; it has edified because it has unified. The 
thoughts, feeHngs, and actions of men were divorced by 
oppression and repression of the child's heart and hand. 
Self -activity, listening to the child's cry for the crayon and 
the brush, for the hammer and the saw, for the throttle 
and the electric switch, has heard, and the child in 
a world of art, science, rehgion, and love is growing to 
the stature of its Maker's ideal. 



CHAPTER VII 
RIGHTEOUSNESS 

SCIENCE in the world is like the surveyor and the 
engineer in a new country; it opens up highways 
for the mind; it bridges the chasms and marshes; it 
gives us dominion over the wild; it brings order out of 
chaos. What a maze, what a tangle the world is till we 
come to look upon it with the clews and solutions in mind 
which science affords! The heavens seem a haphazard 
spatter of stars, the earth a wild jumble of plants and 
animals and blind forces all struggling with one another, — 
confusion, contradiction, failure everywhere. And so it 
was to the early men and so it still is to those who have 
not the light of science, but so it need not remain to the 
child born into the world to-day. The great mysteries 
of life and death, of final causes and ultimate ends still 
remain and will continue, but nature now, compared with 
the nature of a few centuries ago, is like a land subdued 
and peopled and cultivated compared with a pathless 
wilderness. " So says John Burroughs. 

Government has liberated and mothered art; religion, 
sweetened and ennobled government. Science has set 
its ladder of natural law over against government, art, and 
religion, and they, mounting above speculation, have 
attained dominion over earth, sea, and air. Not more 
than a century ago man was the center of a world where 
everything was at loggerheads. Did earthquake and 
pestilence appear ? Then an angry god was being appeased. 
Did flood or drought approach? They were tokens of 
divine scourgings. Was the sun red within the compass 

59 



6o GROWING A LIFE 

of certain days ? That was why a messenger brought news 
that war was being talked in the palace of the king. There 
is a man running a machine with that sputtering, hissing 
stuff that makes the teakettle lid dance. Very well, no 
good will come of it, for does it not bum and cut as though 
the very spirit of the evil one were in it? Beware of 
the cheerful mind, for sorrow will sup with it to-morrow. 

Thus mind ttuned to matter, and in terms of supersti- 
tion read its doom. Thus matter, in arching sky, in 
generous cloud, in shady forest, in all her myriad forms 
held out beseeching arms to man only to receive from him 
suspicion and disdain. Mind was a caged animal between 
two jailers, the flesh and the devil below and an avenging 
God above. Long faces were at a premium, while love 
and laughter bowed the knee to hate. A man was a 
worm of the dust, and what were worms good for but to 
crush? So pulpiteers preached showers of brimstone, 
kings sent nations to death, schoolmasters flogged, and 
the philosophy of pessimism spread its broad black pall 
over the thoughts of man. 

But always there are some men who bow not to Baal. 
"God sends His teachers into every age, to every race of 
man, with revelations fitted to their growth, nor gives 
the Nile of Truth into the selfish realm of one sole race. " 
Priestly found the world a new atmosphere, and La Place 
and La Grange trained their mathematics to step along 
the rim of the solar system until every lost planet was 
recovered. Spectnmi analysis swung its infallible search- 
light from star to star, and under Kirchoff and Bunsen 
revealed that the remotest bodies disclosed by the telescope 
are truly a part and parcel of the dynamic world in which 
we live. Lyell forged his way over plains and mountains, 
and with trust in Nature's guidance traced cause and 



RIGHTEOUSNESS 6i 

effect by comparative anatomy, by fossiliferous life, and 
proved with Moses that earth was the result of growth 
and not of whim. Darwin searched and Huxley exposed, 
Goethe sang and Spencer theorized; and the world swung 
into full-orbed day — a creation of right not wrong, a 
thing of law and love. 

With careful search, under great toil and execration, we 
have come to know that man has a glorious heritage. 
If anything be wrong it is because of our own disobedi- 
ence to law. If there be weakness, it is of the flesh, not 
the spirit. The environment may be disarranged, but the 
forces of Nature are orderly and only wait for system 
to be restored. Going into the growth-world, if to the 
wheat sown upon a thousand fields we give a proper 
environment, perfection results. Examine that noble 
forest through which you pass. If blight of wind or 
insect has not matched contrary forces with the rich soil 
and abundant rainfall, nothing will be seen but arboreal 
symmetry. So the forces of growth, like all Nature's 
forces, are right, ever right. Mind is a force of growth; 
mind is naturally self -active, and in its self -activity mind 
naturally grows right. 

If you wish to prove how knowledge grows and wisdom 
lingers, state this proposition — ^mind naturally grows 
right — before a body of average thinkers. At once 
you will read doubt written upon their faces. Offer 
proof, and they will refute it. They may admit that 
order and law pervade the inorganic world, that star 
and stone move in their orbits beneath forces true and 
perfect. They will admit that all is stable and divinely 
related in the vegetable kingdom; that in the animal 
kingdom, up to and including man's physical growth, 
all is governed by a propitious and inflexible law. But 



62 GROWING A LIFE 

there you must halt. Into that force-woiid, the highest 
because most complex, the most potent because it domi- 
nates all, the most divine since it alone knows God, you 
must not carry your law of continuous good. They will 
tell you that other forces may be orderly, but mind is 
erratic. Other forces may be true, but mind is false. 
Other forces may obey the behests of an all-directing 
Good, but mind is naturally depraved. 

This blighting, vmscientific conception, although fast 
dying out, still lingers about too many places where 
children grow. If it were possible to stop every teacher 
in America upon the threshold as she enters the school- 
room to begin a year's work and ask her one question 
by which her fitness to teach is to be decided, this would 
be the question : ' * Do you believe in the child ? ' ' Stand 
fast; "in the child" means all children, rich and poor, 
beautiful and iigly, clean and dirty, pure and sinful, 
divine and devilish. Do not dissimulate. The intuitive 
child heart will expose and condemn you. Do not equiv- 
ocate and mutter. Speak out, and say whether these 
expressions of aptitude or stupidity, cleanhness or filth, 
good or bad in child form shall be given faith. If "No" 
be your answer, then turn to other work until you learn 
that men and children can receive nothing from one who 
distrusts them. Step aside until you learn that mind 
is a force of Nature ; and like all of Nature's forces, such 
as light, heat, and electricity, is without fault. Halt 
until you grasp the truth. You can afford to have faith 
in that whi,ch God has used through the long train of 
ages to pull this earth from a dark chaos to " a blooming, 
fertile, heaven-encompassed world. " 

Let a teacher believe that mind naturally grows right 
and ever there is sure orround beneath her feet. Mind 



RIGHTEOUSNESS 63 

naturally grows right, mind unnaturally grows wrong. 
Is there a dullness about this pupil or an unnatural bril- 
liancy about that other? You know that it is not the 
mind, for mind naturally grows right. Make all excuse 
you will for your teaching, for the home training, the par- 
entage, and other features of environment, but make 
none for mind. 

Is there a little pest who begins in early hours to play 
havoc with your plans for the day? Think; maybe you 
made those plans for self and overlooked this junior 
partner in the firm. Consult him, using here a watchful 
eye, there a quiet hand and soothing voice. Speak in a 
low, sweet tone, so different from the scolding, high-pitched 
tones he heard in his home a little while ago, thus enabling 
him to start out with a pleasant sensation. 

"There they come to class again, Hke so many cattle, " 
shouted the schoolroom keeper in high-pitched tones 
which spoke of rage, sarcasm, and rebuke. And on 
they came with an extra tribute to the challenge, with 
a harder thump of heels than ever and a more knowing 
twinkle of the eye than yesterday. They know her better 
than she knows herself. She thinks she is a teacher and 
they know she is a patrol. She thinks she is to keep 
order and they know her as the chief noise maker in the 
schoolroom. She thinks she is in command and running 
things; she should know that they have been running 
things ever since they found out that she w^as not an 
efficient leader, but an unbalanced creature. 

*' Superintendent, I am trying," said a young woman 
to the school chief. She was one of those untrained 
teachers to whom the American public has turned over 
so much of the instruction of its children. They are 
aspiring, bright — and besides, what is going to become of 



64 GROWING A LIFE 

them if you do not give them something to do, says the 
American school board. She stood there, as fine a speci- 
men of undeveloped teacherhood as one might look upon. 
Time after time had she been criticized for having a 
disorderly room, for cultivating lawlessness and engen- 
dering weakness. Each time she saw her mistake and 
promised it should not recur. But here again the class, 
the whole room, was a hotbed of idleness and noise. "I 
try to stop it; I talk, I tell them stories, I draw pretty 
pictures, I send them to play, I beseech, I threaten, and 
I whip, but I cannot make them work or be quiet. " Only 
too true; they were then shifting in their seats, talking 
in undertones, standing up only to see how they might 
slide back into their seats, or coming with noisy feet to 
ask a question the answer to which they already knew, — 
in fact, doing all those things the unlicensed mind of 
children always suggests. Turning to the teacher, the 
superintendent asked, "What are you doing?" 

*'I doing? Why, I was hearing the reading lesson.** 

"Was that all?" 

"Yes, I think so, " replied the teacher, rolling her eyes 
as if in quest of an idea. 

"Take a piece of paper and write down what you were 
doing as I saw it," said the superintendent. "You 
greeted me in tones loud enough to be heard throughout 
the building. You asked questions in the same tone. 
You paced with nervous tread back and forth before your 
class while the pupils, with smiles and winks, telegraphed 
to each other yotu* lack of poise. Yotu* heels made more 
noise than any other three pairs in the room. Your voice 
drowned the din and confusion of the noisy tramping 
of the pupils as they came for a walk, though ostensibly 
to ask you a question. The shifting of yoiu: attention 



RIGHTEOUSNESS 6$ 

from the class in recitation to the class in study, with 
loud criticism and nervous starts, destroyed your balance. 
Read this, and then let me ask, as to this disorder, 
who should be criticized? No, my young friend, there 
is nothing the matter with the pupils here, but the 
teacher needs to study herself. The queenship of this 
schoolroom lies within you, as does the Kingdom of 
Heaven. Conquer self, lower your voice, wear rubber 
heels or quit using them to dig into the floor, relax body 
and mind before preparation, and believe in self until 
you can walk or stand, sit or run, with ease and grace. 
Bring your physical self into harmony with a clear, happy, 
and restful mind, and, believe me, your children will 
move, live, and have their quiet being in you. If you 
cannot do this, in the name of the children you are injur- 
ing, get out of the schoolroom." 

She did not get out, but she did conquer self, poised her 
soul in the power-giving faith that she was wrong, that 
the child's mind naturally grows right, and to-day she 
is one of the most successful teachers in a splendid system 
of city schools. 

In "A Teacher's Talk to Teachers" in The Ladies* 
Home Journal Miss Williams has admirably summed up 
the thoughts embodied in the foregoing. ** In saying these 
things, I have told you nothing new. You have heard 
them repeated at institutes. Every recent educational 
book or periodical contains at least a reference to them. 
I bring them up now not to inform you, but to ask you 
whether you believe them. If you do, you act upon them, 
since the only beliefs to which current thought permits 
the name are those which you work out in conduct.** 

There it is — the gulf between the dreamer, the drifter 
in teaching, and the doer. It is just a north star of faith. 

5 



66 GROWING A LIFE 

There need be but a facing about, and the individual 
may exchange a vista of horror for one of beauty. So a 
worker among the children, with the lodestar of Nature's 
simple, unwavering proof before her, out of discord, out 
of strife and pessimism, steps into haiTQony, power, and 
joy. Ask the American teacher what she believes, and 
in her reply you have a picture of her work. 

This principle of pedagogy, that mind naturally grows 
right, is another supreme plea for consideration of the 
individual. The class may be all wrong; but you are 
not teaching classes, but individuals. The lesson may be 
a failure — you planned it with a textbook or a teachers' 
aid — but the mind of that child is no failure. Do not 
scold, do not fret, do not accuse! Do you know whom 
you are accusing? Do you know even his whole name, 
his father's name, the name of his mother, his lineage, 
the occupation of his parents, something of their home 
life, his home, his health, appetite, strength of senses, 
sleep, play, inclination, love, hate, religion, companions, 
acquirements, and what he thinks of you? Wait and 
learn about him before you pass judgment. 

Two boys sit side by side. The teacher has detained 
them that she might make comparison. James, she 
knows, is a model child ; William is the bane of her exist- 
ence. Beyond that she has not gone. ''William, once 
more I urge you to be a better boy. All day you 
have tried my patience, and now it is at the breaking 
point. Besides complete ignorance of the lesson, you 
have chosen to disregard my commands. Here is 
James, no larger, no older, and with no better mind, yet 
he is always studious, always obedient. Tell me, Wil- 
liam, " and the teacher's voice grew low and tender with 
feeling, "tell me why you are such a bad boy." It 



RIGHTEOUSNESS 67 

seemed as though light had come at last, for with tears 
falling fast the little fellow said, " 'Deed, teacher, I dunno. 
I swear every day I'll be better, and just when I think 
I'm doin' fine, something seems to just jerk me back to 
the old way again. I v/ish, " and with more tears came 
the words, *'I could be as good as James, but I'm afraid 
I never can, because, " and the sobs came thick and hard, 
"because, sometimes, I'm afraid my mind's like mother's, 
and she is in the insane asylum. " 

Ah, teacher, there is your answer. One of those chil- 
dren was bom under the roof of a normal, happy home; 
the other was born under the shadow of insanity, and now 
motherless lives ever in dread of it. This is an exaggera- 
tion, some one says. No, it is taken directly from the 
diary of an American teacher, and the teacher who doubts 
the frequency of such experiences either has no experi- 
ence or never touched the heartstrings of individual 
children. When thought pictures Squeers's method applied 
to thousands of homes and schools — children living in an 
atmosphere of scowling faces, threats, slaps, kicks, and 
sticks; teachers exclaiming, "Say all the nice things 
you please about the minds of children naturally growing 
right, but we know some that are naturally demoniacal " — 
memory calls up a story told by a Kentucky educator, 
which if possible should reach every teacher harboring 
such pessimistic thoughts. 

He said: "When acting as principal, yearsago, down 
on the waterfront in Louisville, many hard problems 
arose in dealing witH the life along the -river. One case 
especially stands out in memory. In those" years the 
reign of the rod was supreme. Like Draco's laws, for the 
least infraction the boy got the switch, and we knew no 
greater punishment for larger offenses. So this incorrigible 



68 GROWING A LIFE 

boy received it early and often. He became noted 
for two things — ^how in a school-yard brawl he could 
straighten out his arm and measure an adversary fiat 
along the ground, and how nonchalantly he could take the 
whippings that I gave him. He would lift a shoulder or 
maintain his back in a hump after one of my best efforts, 
as if to say, * Why not go ahead? This thing seems to do 
you lots of good, while it doesn't hurt me at all.' 

"One day a lad came hastily into my office saying a 
certain teacher wanted me at once. I went, and there, 
back braced against the wall, knife in half -hidden hand, 
and teacher confronting him with a switch in her hand 
and tears in her eyes, stood my boy. She said: This boy 
has been unruly all the morning. At last I concluded 
that I must punish him. He resented it, and said that I 
must not hit him again; if I did, he would cut me.* 

"There stood the young outlaw, angry, sullen, defiant. 
Bidding him come with me that I might make out papers 
for expulsion, I started for my office. As we moved along 
I looked at him, and was struck forcibly with the fact that 
often as I had beaten him, I had never seen him before. 
There he was, sturdy of build, expressive of head and face, 
truly a good animal. Turn this boy out? Where would 
he go? Home? What home? Something seemed to 
whisper, *You know nothing of this child, and he it is you 
are paid to educate, to save — not the normal child whom 
anybody can help.* So in self-defense I asked, * Where 
do you live, my son ? * 

" 'Down on the river,* he muttered. 

'* *Are your parents living?* 

" 'Yes, sir,* he replied. 

" 'What does your father do?' 

" 'Hauls coal.' 



RIGHTEOUSNESS 69 

" *And your mother, does she help the home by her 
work?' 

" *Yes, sir.' 

" 'By doing what?' 

" 'By washing.' 

" 'Do you have a happy time about home?' The ox- 
like eyes searched mine for explanation. 'I mean, is your 
father kind and good always?' 

" 'Yes, sir, most all of the time.' 

" 'And when is it you find him unkind?' 

" 'When he is drunk,' said the boy with a scowl. 

" 'What happens then, my lad?" 

" 'He beats me.' 

" 'Too bad, but then your mother makes up for all that 
unkindness; she is always kind?' Never shall I forget the 
startled look in his eyes, as if the wild, untrained heart 
of the boy said, 'Go no further; I would defend my 
mother'; but he answered, 'Yes, most all the time.' 

" 'And when is it that you are not happy with your 
mother?' 

"With a lump in the throat, and after much effort, he 
replied, 'When she is drunk, too.' 

" 'How does she treat you then?' 

*' And the lips of the boy slowly said, 'She beats me.* 

*'It went through me like an electric shock. 'You 
beat him; what a drunken father and mother have done 
to this poor body you also have done. Your method at 
school has been their method at home. A home of 
drunkenness has sent him to you bruised and imbruted 
with stripes, and you beat him some more, thus degrading 
him the more. If you had treated this mind as though 
it were noble, the result might have been different.* 
Repentance shot me through and through. I must try 



70 GROWING A LIFE 

to get back my self-respect. *My boy,' I said, *I want to 
beg you to forgive me. I have been mistreating you.' 

"The boy raised his dark eyes searchingly and said, 
*I don't know what you mean.* 

" 'I mean just this. You have come to me a Httle boy, 
and made mistakes for which I have beaten you. Instead 
of striking you, I should have cared for you, talked with 
you, loved you. But I beat you, and I want you to 
forgive me and promise to help me.' 

" 'Why, Mr. ,' calling my name with far more 

show of feeling than he had ever before evinced, "I do 
not see how I can help you.' 

" 'You can help me by giving me another chance to 
help you. Come, my boy, promise me that you will 
remain in school, be dutiful, and let me be your friend 
and you be mine.' 

''Shaking his head, but with more light in his eye, he 
said, 'I do not see how I can be your friend.' 

" 'You can do your best in school, and then I will do 
my best to help you. Come, give me your hand; let us 
earnestly promise each other to be good friends.' 

"Slowly the truth went home, and with tears flowing 
from the fountain of his soul he said earnestly, 'I will, 
Mr. , I will be a better boy. I will be your friend.' 

"And," said this great teacher, "from that very day 
he was a different boy. Step by step I saw him climb 
through the grades. With a special handclasp and 
enco-uraging word he left me and entered high school. 
Then after four years of warm companionship I saw him 
graduated, and with a look of gratitude over his shoulder 
for me, pass out into the world. This story vv^ould be 
but half told if I did not tell you what follows. A few 
years ago I was in the city of San Francisco at a meeting 



RIGHTEOUSNESS 71 

of the National Education Association. One evening 
while sitting in the lobby of one of the great hotels a bell- 
boy came to say a gentleman wished to speak to me. He 
was followed by a young man who bore the unmistakable 
stamp of the wide-awake, progressive Vv^estemer. Holding 
out his hand, with a smile he asked if I remembered 
him. Some things about him seemed familiar, but I 
did not know him. Did I remember the boy whom I 
used to teach, down on the waterfront in Louisville, 
and with whom I had once made a compact of friendship ? 
With heartiest handclasp we met again. He said: *I 
came here soon after leaving high school, and after great 
effort have built up a prosperous business and possess a 
good home. I have a wife to whom I have often told the 
story of the help you gave me. We both believe that you 
have been the greatest force for good in making me a man. 
We often speak your name when at night we thank God 
for his blessings, and I have come to take you to my home 
that my wife may know you.' " 

Although almost twenty years have passed since this 
story fell upon my ears, it stands out as vividly in memory 
as if related yesterday. Raising his fine face, all aglow 
with sweetest faith in the human heart, the great man 
concluded, "It pays to trust in boys and girls." 

It is true. This poor hulk of pain, vanity, and 
weakness, the body and its surroundings, may press 
sorely upon the mind; but with love, and cheer, with 
hand and heart let us pry, lift, and work until the weight 
is removed and mind is given its natural growth. Mind 
is all right. This is the optimism seizing the entire 
world. Reach up, reach up, you teachers and parents 
of children, until you grasp this practical truth, deduced 
from atom, molecule, plant, and animal — mind naturally 



72 GROWING A LIFE 

grows right. Look up, not down; forward, not back; 
out, not in; and lend a hand. 

"Things tend still upward, progress is 
The law of life, man is not man as yet ... 
But in completed man begins anew 
A tendency to God." 



CHAPTER VIII 
HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 

WE have moved thus far in the assurance that we 
tread firm pedagogical ground. There has been 
no speculation; with devious ways of men-made plans 
and methods we have had nothing to do. For a few 
cents we can buy enough of these to puzzle for a lifetime. 
It was understood in the beginning that the teacher did 
not need methods or plans. The multiplicity of these is 
the tangled maze from which the teachers of children 
would escape. What we wish and must have where 
mind is studied is law — simple, sense-supported law. 
We have gone into the world of substance, and with guides 
who have tracked truth home over a thousand ranges of 
thought we have met the laws of God or Nature face to 
face. We have found that the sages say all is one and one 
is all under the law of continuity. This gives us, who 
seek for basic truths of mind, splendid hope. Two phases 
of the universe present themselves, — the realm of matter 
and the realm of force. In the latter we find our study, 
mind, by the phenomena it presents, the only way by 
which anything can be named or classified. We move 
on until in that force-world where growth is chief we 
approach closer to mind. Then through the organic 
world of vegetable and animal life we pass, and just where 
unconscious force passes into conscious energy, there we 
find another basic attribute of mind. 

We turn back to the growth-world to observe some of 
its basic qualities, and wherever growth is seen, self- 
activity is the primal principle. Continuity reveals the 

73 



74 GROWING A LIFE 

mind of man as a thing of life from within outward. 
Nowhere is there an exception, and another base for 
mental development is laid in that mind is naturally 
self -active. We turn to microscope, telescope, and test 
tube, and they tell how, when, and where forces organic 
or inorganic, physical or chemical, vital or spiritual, are 
met; they are always sure, always right. Again conti- 
nuity with swift finger traces the way to the mental forces 
and finds that in the highest efforts of God and Nature 
the law of beneficence holds. The teacher finds in this 
the revelation that mind naturally grows right. 

These foundation stones in the educational structure 
may be few; but so far as knowledge ranges they are as 
true and immovable as the universe of which they are 
a part. Let us go forward with that well-groimded opti- 
mism. Nature has thus far led us to believe that if we 
shall be as "bold as truth and as uncompromising as 
justice" greater victories for the children await us. 

How it should delight us to observe that all genuine 
thinkers seek to lay their comer stones of truth upon 
Nature's act. To the fool the commonplace world is 
the wise or thinking man's sanctum sanctorum. Too 
often do individuals, called to worthy pursuits, with 
unseeing eyes go through God's universe, sensing nothing 
of the manifold color of ocean and land, the form and 
beauty of encircling, fleecy clouds, of life and love — 
nothing but dirt to tread upon, nothing but business 
buried in dollars to think about; no home, no school, 
no work, no world save sordid self. 

The boldest, clearest word for human betterment that 
has been spoken for a decade is found in The New Ethics 
by J. Howard Moore, of the Crane Manual Training 
High School, Chicago. It is an uncompromising plea 



HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 75 

for a recognition of the best there is in man. It asks 
that mind assert its dominion over unfavorable environ- 
ment. It is a fighting message full of fervor bom of rich, 
warm blood which flows straight to the true brotherhood 
of man and leads to the real fatherhood of God. It is a 
finer message for teachers than many of the driveling, 
puerile kind fostered under "quick-result" names. For 
the lasting part of such a message, the practical part, is 
not a saying, not an appeal; it is the fundamental truth 
upon which such sayings and appeals rest. This appeal 
is for a new ethics, a new view of the soul. Keep in mind 
the introduction to this work, and mark what was said 
of a need in pedagogy. Professor Moore bids men throw 
away plans of human method and uplift that are shallow, 
metaphysical, and smell of the chamel house of the Dark 
Ages. Up into God's best altruism, where man's chief 
happiness must ever rest, he climbs, and light and joy 
axe reached. With the skill of a scientist he goes forth 
to learn the story of life from crawling worm, fluttering 
moth, darting fish, soaring bird, and man. He talks to 
life, all life, not a part. 

This is cited because it is a flashlight upon the broad 
central theme of this work — that Nature is the one great 
teacher. It proves that advanced thought is moving this 
way. It reveals in what splendid company we journey, 
as, passing to our schoolroom, we hear giant thinkers of 
this and the preceding half -century expressing kindred 
faith. The needs of the teacher are thought and a few 
well-defined principles of life, grooved and rooted in uni- 
versal law. The teachers of the land will never be worthy 
of their heritage until they break loose from petty text, 
ready-to-use plans, and dull routine, and think and live 
broadly. 



76 GROWING A LIFE 

Dr. Mclver of sainted memory, an educator of North 
Carolina, referred aptly to a classification which was 
long only too justly applied to the teacher. Going 
through a country district he turned into a farm house 
for a drink of water, and encountered an old woman, 
keen minded and kindly and gracious of manner. En- 
gaging her in conversation, he learned that she was 
the mother of five sons. Upon asking if all were living, 
Dr. Mclver was informed that two were living, two were 
dead, and one was ** teaching school." But the teachers 
are now stirred by a breath of a greater life. They are 
believing in their work, they are believing in themselves, 
and they are making their faith felt. 

A quotation from The New Ethics, like an index finger 
points to another strong principle of pedagogy, indissolu- 
bly linked with those heretofore deduced from the natural 
world. The end of new or old ethical plan and progress, 
because the end of all good, is happiness. "Righteous 
or right happiness? " some one asks. Certainly, but since 
simplest thought bom of even shallow observation teaches 
that there is no happiness but that bom of right, it needs 
no modification. * * Biology teaches, if it teaches an5rthing, 
that there is a solidarity of the sentient world. . 
The ox [man] slays, the horse he bestrides, the insect he 
bayonets with a pin, the fish he deceives, the moth that 
dies in his evening light, and the poor serpent that flees 
from his footsteps, are his kindred, partaking of his frail- 
ties and sharing his work. No being is utterly unlike or 
utterly unrelated to any other being. . . . 

*'The insect that flutters out its little existence among the 
prairie flowers, and whose nervous architecture is seemingly 
so different from man's, is attracted by the same bright 
colours and delighted by the same sweets and perfumes as 



HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 77 

those that entertain the senses of man. The honey stored 
by the flower for the bee, and by the bee gathered for 
its own use, is stolen and eaten by man himself. The 
thyme and lavender, the rose and jasmine, so alluring to 
the butterfly and bee, are the very things men choose 
to sweeten and adorn their own abodes." 

From deep down in the taproot of primordial life flows 
the active principle, enjoyment. Upward and outward it 
moves into every channel of the growth- world, flooding 
all with color, form and motion, laughter, smiles and 
music. Is life normal ? Then it is happy. Is life happy? 
Then it is normal. Everything reveals this law which 
dominates the mental processes as well as the physical. 
Is mind normal? Then it is happy. Is mind happy? 
Then it is normal. Over every mental process bends this 
bow of promise which teachers of children should ever 
behold; mind naturally enjoys growing right. 

Experience and observation teach that right thinking, 
the chief business of mind, is attended by supreme joy. 
Whether displayed in the abandoned glee, the flashing 
eye, and the flushing cheek of a child, or in the ponderous 
pen of a Carlyle as he startles the hemispheres with his 
titanic thought, there is always joy in thinking. Why did 
the home or school mix pain with instruction? Why 
did classrooms and jails fall into the same category in 
children's minds? Because there thinking, feeling, and 
willing — the sources and supporters of happiness — were 
too often fettered. A class in reading was going 
through the treadmill process of ''Rise, Mary, and read 
the next verse." At last Mary gave way to a large boy 
that had risen and fallen in perfunctory reading classes 
for seven dreary years but, unlike the fall of the Roman 
Empire, as yet the end was nowhere in sight. He had 



78 GROWING A LIFE 

been asked to read that stanza telling of dying autumn, 

*'The melancholy days are come, 
The saddest of the year." 

Thus far he had drawled when the superintendent stepped 
in and asked, ''What is that you said, William?" 

Looking up in blank wonder, the boy replied, "I never 
said an3rthing. " 

"Oh, yes, you did, you said something about 'melan- 
choly days,' " said the visitor cheerily. 

"No, sir," replied William, "I never said anything 
about 'melancholy days.' " 

Coloring, the superintendent said, with distinct warmth 
in voice and eye, "Come now, let us have no nonsense; 
did you not say, 'The melancholy days are come, the 
saddest of the year'? " 

"No, sir," replied the confused and stammering youth 
with a vexation that brought tears, " I never said anything 
at all." 

Dimifounded, the superintendent glowered, and look- 
ing about for something that would explain the situation, 
he exclaimed, "Well, if you did not say it, who did? " 

"Why," explained the lad in all earnestness, "I didn't 
say it; the book said it. " . 

Did one of the seven wise men ever give question a 
truer, better answer? Poor boy, he never said a word of 
it. Between his misused and deadened consciousness and 
the vivid autumn dreams of Bryant an awful chasm 
yawned, unbridged by any text or teacher. To him, 
reading was word calling, stumbling over bowlders of 
thought with only a little comma here or there to break 
the monotony of the journey toward the end for which he 
eagerly panted, a period. With a smile and "I beg your 
pardon," that superintendent, with swift and lively 



HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 79 

questioning, went to work on that stanza; he bade the 
children take up that statement, this word and that, and 
to think on the picture; he led them toward this and that 
light; and soon thought was sending out its beauteous 
streamers from every eye and childish cheek. In five 
minutes he turned to the boy who had denied saying the 
sentence and asked, ** You could have said it, could you not, 
my son?" 

The lad modestly but happily replied, "Yes, sir, if I 
had thought I could have said something like it." 

That last was teaching, and there was the attendant 
sign of pleasure where before was only dull pain. As you 
enter the schoolroom or the home, do the children brighten 
and glow with happiness? If not, seek the cause and 
remove it. It may be your voice. The soul bursts into 
bud and blossom at the sound of the human voice. 
Of the many requisites for a progressive, successful teacher 
none is more necessary than a happy, low-toned voice. 

"Do you see in my face signs of premature age?" 
said a master teacher before a throng of his disciples. 
"Know, then, that these wrinkles are scars left upon my 
brow by the high, shrill voice the teacher used as she 
hurled at my sensitive ears in the old spelling line such 
words as 'shady,' 'lady,' and 'baker.' " Too] true, as many 
more can testify. 

"Why, sire," asked a courtier of Napoleon, "does the 
Empress secure from you policies of state that your cabinet 
attempt in vain to obtain?" "Ah," answered the auto- 
crat of Europe, "you cannot know the bewitching voice of 
my beautiful Josephine. ' ' Every teacher in the land should 
be made to study her voice under a competent critic. 

It may be dress or address by which children are 
approached, but they are sensitive plants, and feel more 



8o GROWING A LIFE 

than they reason. '*My teacher is prettier than yours,** 
may mean nothing, but it may mean everything. "The 
first requisite to success in this life is to be a good animal. " 
Herbert Spencer names here one of the prime demands 
school boards are making upon teachers. Start the child 
toward happiness by giving him a teaching environment 
full of rich, red blood, that can laugh, breathe, and sleep 
well. The era of the laughless instructor is dead. The 
wager between Thomas and Robert as to whether, if the 
teacher laughed, it would break her face, has fallen to 
the ground. The occupant of the schoolroom that took the 
role of Kipling's vampire in looking like '' a rag, a bone, and 
a hank of hair" is gone with the reign of the collarless 
shirt and the unpolished shoe. Praise be to Providence, 
the schools and homes, like the earth, are rolling sunward, 
and those who carry daily messages to children study 
the graces of courtiers; in spotless shirtwaist and well- 
hung skirt, in polished shoe and with well-ordered hair, 
they come with a smile before the true kings and queens 
of Christendom, the children, crying, ''Behold, I bring 
tidings of great joy." 

From self to room, from room to class, from class to 
text, from text to method, from method to recitation, 
from recitation to recreation, from the beginning of the 
day to the close, let the eye of the teacher not fail to note 
whether the seal of happiness is upon all. In the name of 
God and man, do not evade this. Say not this child is 
abnormal or that home is wrong. True, it may be, but 
there the matter must not rest. You were sent to bring 
light to lives that have never known aught but darkness. 
Fail to do this, and you fail utterly. Salary and selfish 
success will avail nothing if you do not bring happiness to 
the children. As you value real success, find a way by 



HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 8i 

which blessed joy and peace may come to your pupils. 
There are thousands of ways, yet there is just one; that 
one says, "Accepting with glad hearts the truth that 
mind naturally enjoys growing right, and having put your 
hand and heart to that faith, look not backward." 

John Ruskin says that one of the saddest and most 
astonishing things to him is that while the true kings and 
queens of the earth, the great poets and thinkers of all 
ages, stand beckoning from bookcase shelves to men and 
women to come associate with them, yet they turn away 
to spend their time in talking with kitchen maids and 
stable boys. Equally as sad a spectacle is presented 
when thousands of teachers and parents, hearing this 
doctrine that joy is the children's heritage, yet go out 
and away to schoolrooms and homes dark and bare, set 
in fenceless and treeless yards, through which sad-eyed 
children go to dull and grinding routine. Truly, 
Dickens, we have need of thy flashing, scathing pen if 
we would penetrate every nook and corner and display 
the squalor, misery, and mal-education going on in the 
*'Dotheboys Halls" that still exist! The cleansing 
htimor and renovating sarcasm of such as Dickens are 
needed even now in great temples dedicated to education 
as well as in the little schoolhouse out at the edge of 
the prairie. 

There was an interesting and a novel scene presented 
when three sets of school directors and a demure little 
* * school marm ' ' met one day. One director said : * ' Miss 
Susie, we have had you in our district two years, and we 
want you again. We want you so much that we have 
gone down into our pockets and made up more than a 
hundred dollars extra for you. This will make your 
salary twenty dollars a month more than last year." 



82 GROWING A LIFE 

"Now, with the permission of the board whose repre- 
sentative has just spoken, " said a shrewd looking farmer, 
"we have come from our district, Miss Susie, to try to 
get you to teach our school. We are in a neighboring 
district and we know your work. We have a bigger school 
and we are going to offer you five dollars a month more 
than you have just been offered. We believe you ought 
to come over and help us." 

The third spokesman made his plea, saying that his 
district knew of the good spellers, speakers, and thinkers 
she was turning out, and he also came to make her an offer. 
They were not prepared at this time to compete with 
their neighbors, but if she would just wait they would 
go back home, raise the money, and show her the best 
salary yet. There sat a winsome girl, mistress of the 
situation so far as three good, local school plums were 
concerned. She had worked out with telling power the 
darkest problem of modern education, increase of salary. 
One who looked upon this scene at once made a resolution 
that, whoever obtained her services, a visit would be 
made to her school. 

On the edge of an open, unfenced spot stood the school- 
house in which she had already taught for two terms. 
She said that a few dollars more must not separate her 
from the love and appreciation of her former pupils, 
patrons, and friends. "The welcome already awaiting 
me in these peoples' hearts I should miss so much," she 
said. A wood skirted the meadow not far away, but the 
place looked hard and barren until you noticed the 
schoolhouse. It was early fall, and festoons of morning- 
glories hung over the windows, and in front cypress, 
feathery, fluffy, graceful cypress, made a bower over the 
door that would have enticed a dryad from her nook. 



HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 83 

Do not ask how these were made to grow and persist. 
She said it was easy, and any one who has seen a human 
soul bind toil to happiness knows that undertaking all 
tasks as though they were easy is the best miracle worker. 
Thousands have asked, and among them scores of school 
keepers, *'How in the world do you keep such beautiful 
flowers on school grounds among children ? ' ' Poor ques- 
tioners, but poorer children who are in the charge of 
these same questioners ! As though children and flowers 
would not grow together as good friends! But to the 
story. 

Passing into the schoolroom, the eye was impressed with 
the cleanliness everywhere. Neat desks, a neat table, a 
bouquet of goldenrod, but overtopping all in their white 
spotlessness were the walls. Upon inquiry it was dis- 
covered that these walls were black dust-covered logs when 
the teacher went there. She set her astonished children to 
work at them, and after broom and washcloth came a 
troop of boy artists with full buckets of white calcimine 
and laid it on heavily. How she gloated as she spoke of 
those days when arithmetic was forgotten and geography 
was but a name, while "Cleanliness in our home" was the 
shibboleth. The Perry picture was in evidence, and she 
smiled again as she told of how, but yesterday, a little 
girl had said, "Miss Susie, it seems the pictures over on 
that wall do not balance. The lines can be made better. 
May I try to do it?" 

The classes were called with a magnetic, pleasing voice, 
and not with a call bell. The pupils moved under her 
loving and watchful eye as subjects passing in review 
before a beloved sovereign. Questions were asked with 
a "Please, " and responses were punctuated at times with 
a "Thank you." Thought was aroused and kept sweet 



84 GROWING A LIFE 

by a clash of mind with mind. She was living with 
them so freely that smiles and laughter showed in dimpled 
cheeks and happy eyes just as if school was not and visitors 
were commonplace. At playtime she called attention to 
a curtained corner behind which were a few books, such 
as Little Men, Little Women, Ten Boys of Long Ago, 
and others which have made glad the hearts of children. 
' ' This is quite worn out because they take it home and enjoy 
it so much." It was the tale of Hans Brinker or the 
Silver Skates. "Ah, sir, " said she, *'you should see these 
dear children cry and crowd for books on Friday after- 
noons. Over there I keep the pretty things the children 
make — a neatly written story, a clever map, a well-torn 
brownie. Just look at that one! Does not that show 
good taste? These children have fine power. When 
mothers come I point out to them what their Httle people 
have done, and we are proud together." 

Thus it went on through the hours. At last, when 
closing time drew near, she turned and asked if the Httle 
ones might not sing for me. Smilingly and in low tones 
she consulted with her flock, then with careful feeling 
after proper pitch they got the note and, sweet voiced 
and soft, followed her in a ''Song of the Owl." It was 
so true, blending with their experiences and the shadow 
of the woods outside, that when they ended the audience 
was touched to tearful elation. Turning at the door for 
a merry good-by from the school, a chorus reflected 
in happy, upturned faces, the puzzle of the three school 
boards and the coveted teacher was solved. There she 
was, a teacher; yes, and more — a spirit of joy. Her creed 
was that under God these children should have light — 
not in feeble beams but in golden floods. There she was, 
from tip of shapely, well-clad foot to crown of beautiful 



HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 85 

hair, from skillful finger tip to pulsing heart, an apostle 
of the law that mind naturally enjoys growing right. ^ 

^ Compare this plea for more attractive schoolrooms and teachers 
with Superintendent Fairchild's report to the National Education 
Association in 1912, on "Why the Public School is so Poorly- 
Attended." The gist of the report is that of the twelve million 
children belonging to the grammar schools in the United States, 
about eight million never reach the end because of unattractive 
surroundings. 



CHAPTER IX 
FOOD 

THE principles thus far enunciated are fundamental 
in mental growth. From these basic truths are de- 
duced some simple postulates that reach far in their 
pedagogical applications. If mind be a force of growth, 
it is to be sustained, as is all growth, by new elements 
taking the place of those exhausted. If all growth is 
sustained by food, then mind must be fed. 

This conclusion opens a wide field of thought and sheds 
practical light into many dark corners where children are 
found. If mind must be fed, then the law of continuity 
suggests, and ultimately demands, that it be fed under the 
same laws as the body. So far, science has invariably 
proved that we get the inorganic under the same laws as 
the organic; the mind under the same laws as the body. 
We must accept it as so here. Many words coined for 
the physiological world have been applied to the mental. 
"Healthful mind, " ''masticated thought," "omnivorous 
intellect," "digested ideas," and a hundred other such 
modifications reveal that mind is so like the body that its 
attributes and processes may bear the same names as those 
coined for the body. There are some who would say that 
these are figurative expressions. Figurative expressions, 
when constantly used, cease to be figurative and drop 
into the commonplace of everyday usage. This much 
is apparent to a child who reads the physiology of the 
present day — that the bodily functions are so intimately 
associated with the mental functions that they must never 
be dissociated. One of the leading series of physiologies 

86 



FOOD 87 

put forth in recent years has a volume entitled Control 
of Body and Mind. Psychology, on the other hand, 
learned long ago that if it had any claim to respect, it 
depended upon relating mind to body. 

If mind may be fed we are ready to affirm that its chief 
agent of food supply is the body. The mind takes no 
food, so far as we know, except through the blood. The 
five senses, those great avenues by which mind articulates 
with its environment, depend upon the blood supply for 
their efficacy and growth. Does not this at once proclaim 
in compelHng terms to teachers and all interested in chil- 
dren that you should begin with the body if you would 
have the mind grow right? "That is an old statement, " 
says the reader smilingly. In the name of common sense 
and history, when did the age of a statement or thought 
insure its acceptance ? For nearly two thousand years the 
words have been coming to us, "Love your enemies, do 
good to them that hate you, " yet the world, calling itself 
highly civilized, has never penetrated the outer cover of 
that practical principle of ethics. 

All true masters have called the minds of their children 
to greater powers through feeding starved bodies, healing 
diseased organs, and nursing sick functions. Pestalozzi 
did it at Yverdon ; Froebeldid it at Keilhau; Dickens did 
it in England by unlocking with his caustic yet luminous 
pen all the dark prisons and closets misnamed schools. 
He pointed the public to starved, abused, and joyless 
childhood under the merciless tutelage of a Squeers or a 
Choakumchild. Mann began his work in America upon 
the physical basis. Better school buildings, more light, 
cleaner and purer air, and more even temperatures. The 
idea has moved on, gaining accretion, until in centers 
where education is fast becoming a science, each step, 



88 GROWING A LIFE 

from the employment of an architect to plan the school 
building, its light, heat, air, and water supply, is based 
on the health of the child; the selection of the superin- 
tendent and teachers, all are chosen upon the principle, — 
begin with the body if you would have the mind grow 
right. 

In spite of this, however, step just around the comer 
from one of these centers and what do you find ? A room 
of fifty children, eyes listless, limbs lolling, heads aching, 
stove roaring, heat suffocating, light flickering, and air 
sickening, teacher in the midst, textbook supreme. You 
are challenged to visit three schoolrooms near you as soon 
as possible; and if you do not find one of the three coming 
under this description, drop this book and dismiss it from 
your mind. If you are a teacher, you are permitted 
to count your own schoolroom as one of the three in order 
to reduce the ratio. Meager measures of light and air, 
stove heat, chalk dust, dead water supply, damp base- 
ments, and overcrowded rooms are some evils the American 
school boards have not yet hated enough. 

But let the teacher take her share of credit or discredit 
in this food supply. ''What is the matter with your 
room. Miss Lucy? Truly, I can just see the dim outlines 
of your children." **Why, it is dark, I suppose, but this 
morning the sun shone in along that side so fiercely I 
pulled the curtains close and forgot to put them up again." 

"You sent for me to investigate an odor of gas in the 
room, " said the superintendent to one of his best teachers. 

"Yes," said the teacher, "this morning as soon as I 
entered the room I discovered that gas was escaping." 

In looking about the room he noticed that not a single 
window had been lowered. "Why did you not open 
the windows to let this gas escape, especially the upper 



FOOD 89 

divisions, that a current from above could be had?" he 
asked vehemently. 

"Oh," said she with a smile, "I did not know these 
windows could be lowered. " 

"You should have a basin of water on this hot stove, " 
said a visitor to the red-faced, coughing teacher surrounded 
by red-faced, coughing pupils. 

"Yes, I know it; but it is the business of the school 
board to furnish these things, and I will do without forever 
before I will buy them; the teacher's salary is small 
enough, anyway." 

"Give physical drills every little while to destroy this 
lassitude," advised a supervisor as he looked upon a 
recitation that bore every stamp of lifelessness. "Give 
them a cheerful, quick swing. " 

"But you cannot be stopping your class exercises every 
little while to do such things as calisthenics, " replied the 
Nestor of the high-school faculty; "you will break to 
pieces your class work. " 

Such instructors, or destructors, should be haunted for 
a season by a vision like this: Seated high on a 
throne a textbook open at some page whereon is printed 
in large letters, "Take this, and this, and this." Out in 
front stretch pupils* desks, where, bowed low, meek, 
hollow-eyed, and gaunt sit the members of a high-school 
class. In the shadows may be seen faintly a few forms 
prostrate, and above them is written, "Vanquished because 
of weak lungs," "indigestion," or "nervous collapse." 
Between King Textbook and his worshipers stands the 
sweet-faced but ignorant teacher, with pointer touching 
the king, and from her mouth issues the statement: 
"From the decree of this king, O children, there is no 
appeal." Over in the door stand the anxious and 



90 GROWING A LIFE 

inspiring forms of Fresh Air, Right Temperature, and Ex- 
ercise, shouting in chorus, **And she calls that teaching!" 

Too often the instructor of children agrees with the 
mother who sent the following letter to a complaining 
teacher who had demanded that WilHam be given a 
bath. "Dear Miss: William says that you want him 
to wash. You aint satisfied with his sent. William aint 
no rose and I want you to learn him, not smell him. " 

It will behoove all who study the child to study the 
body. In the food world, to observe the kinds of food, 
their value and their use, is an essential business of the 
teacher. The six great movements of the present age are 
the one-price system, aerial navigation, rejuvenation of 
the soil, evolution, rapid transit, and dietetics. The food 
of man has changed. The battle of Mukden not only 
put the Russians on the run, but at the same time it gave 
the meat-eaters a lesson. Here are a few things that 
progressive people remember when they select and pre- 
pare food : 

A few foods, well masticated, are best. 

Vegetables are in the main more nutritious than 

meats, and are more easily digested. 
Fruits and cereals are the power producers. 

Now if truths pertaining to physical nourishment are 
vital to home and school, if food classification for the 
body should be made a close study, how much more 
should the mental foods sustaining mental life be closely 
studied and classified. Inspecting the mental foods 
cloesly, we find that they drop into the same classifi- 
cation as the physical : natural and artificial, heavy and 
light, digestible and indigestible. 

Under the natural mental food of the child comes the 
natural world as revealed to a healthful sensoriiim. Here 



FOOD 91 

is the cooling, refreshing, appetizing fruit right off the tree. 
Luscious peach or juicy plum never yielded more pleasure 
or support to the body than communion with flower- 
decked meadows, shadowy woods, and winding streams 
gives to the mind. James Whit comb Riley sings of 
"Knee Deep in June"; but' if you want to see children 
get closer to that than Riley ever did in verse, let them 
go out with a competent guide to watch Robin Redbreast 
build his nest, to catch polliwogs in shady pools, or to 
sit upon the green grass happy in the study of Nature's 
green calyx or multicolored corolla. First-hand obser- 
vation is to observation through books as the fresh apple 
plucked from the bough compared with the apple out of 
the can. Blessed be the devotees of Nature study! 
True, there have been serious blunders made by those 
who just ''doted" on Nature, in fact, were ** crazy about 
her, " as they expressed it, but who carried on their ravings 
within the radius of a classroom or text while the school 
window box and aquarium were dusty and the school 
yard looked like an imported piece of the Sahara desert. 
Nature study has slipped into the intellect, heart, and 
practice of the true teacher as well as into the curriculum. 
Nature study is no longer a thing fenced off, but something 
included in all truth. The first-grade teacher wins her 
way to success through knowledge of birds, bees, and 
flowers. The intermediate grades in the best schools 
are taught by those who have ears to hear and hands to 
mold, cut, and draw the pretty things of earth, air, and 
water. The high schools, in laboratories, observation 
trips, shops, and gardens, are giving a new birth to educa- 
tion through the study of things at first hand. Since the 
Quincy, Massachusetts, school board became affrighted 
at Francis W. Parker's "dead duck, " the fresh food supply 



92 GROWING A LIFE 

of children has been revolutionized. The measure of teach- 
ing now is determined by the ability to feed the children 
this natural nourishment. The strength of methods can 
be tested by how much or how little mind is taught 
to see, to feel, to hear, to touch, to taste. The force of 
your management or discipline lies in your capacity to 
reveal the beauty, truth, and harmony of the objects 
about your school or home. The position you hold, the 
salary you secure, and the impression you make depend 
upon how daily you use your senses on your environment. 
In olden days the man who saw, truly saw, was called 
a seer. It came to be known, this special harvest of 
practical seeing, as wisdom. It is so now as witnessed 
in a Franklin whose keen eyes saw a messenger in the 
lightning's flash, a Morse who read messages in the electric 
spark, and a Marconi who beheld unseen currents sweep 
words around the globe in the twinkling of an eye. The 
educated man is the man who can first learn from 
Nature her secrets. Books are nothing but index fingers 
pointing the way to second-hand facts. Nature taught 
these facts to the writer; he gave them to you. In the 
reading class, and in all classes for that matter, how 
often is a thought observed only through the narrow slit 
of the book's back. 

"The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; 

It rains, and the wind is never weary; 

The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, 

But at every gust the dead leaves fall. 

And the day is dark and dreary. 

"Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; 
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; 
Thy fate is the common fate of all, 
Into each life some rain must fall, 

Some days must be dark and dreary." 



FOOD 93 

This sentiment, inspired by boiintiful Nature and stored 
up in these words, is droned off. Few if any questions are 
asked, and these few receive perfunctory replies. With 
not a glance at Longfellow, who brings the messages, they 
turn away from this messenger of Mother Natiu-e to par- 
take of another meal of husks or word calling. Is this not 
a dark and unsavory procediu-e for a teacher? After the 
art of phrase and flow of rhythm had been seen and ap- 
preciated in these stanzas, the student should have gone 
to the window with eyes trained to see how much of this 
truth lies out there in field and sky. Then some girl or 
boy would disclose the fact that Longfellow was only an 
imitator. God first wrote those lines. 

When we notice how the indigestible is served to chil- 
dren; how reading is word calling instead of sensing; how 
spelHng is routine hearing instead of comparative seeing; 
how language is a hodgepodge of rules rather than a 
medium of exchange; how history is a mess of dates with- 
out even the seeds extracted, when it should be the grand 
serial story of man; how physiology is a subsistence upon 
confusing names when it should be a diet of observation 
seasoned by hygienic deeds; how arithmetic is an arbi- 
trary mess of figures conf oimding and indigestible instead 
of a feast of reason stimulated by illustration and chal- 
lenge; how the heart of the curriculum is scarcely touched, 
while the husks are fed all the day long— truly, it is a 
disheartening spectacle that is presented. 

Among the artificial foods, as has been intimated, we 
must place the texts. They are foods in tin cans and cold 
storage to which the teacher and parents must, by well- 
directed plan, restore Nature's original flavor. In many 
cases they are stale and as insipid as melons long pulled 
or oranges plucked too early. We serve the literature 



94 GROWING A LIFE 

of past centuries, arithmetic or history of the Middle 
Ages, without scraping the mold off the top or toning them 
with current deeds. Geography is taught as though it 
were a settled thing. The plan Bob Taylor puts into the 
mouth of the master of the "old-field school" still obtains. 
Governor Taylor said that the school board asked the old 
teacher what was his plan or system of teaching geography. 
He repHed, with lofty mien, "That depends upon whar I 
am teaching. If they want me to teach the round sys- 
tem, I teach it; but if the people require the fiat system, 
why, I teach that. " 

Carrying the figure of canned or cold-storage foods fur- 
ther, it is sometimes true that many of them are entirely 
worthless. Hundreds of spelling lists , many of our reading 
texts, nearly all of our copy books, half of our arithmetics, 
two thirds of our texts on language should be taken out of 
our schoolrooms and carted away to the trash pile. What 
could be substituted for all this loss ? The worthy portion 
remaining, the active world without and within, and a 
teacher who knows. 

Some indispensable mental pabiilimi is found in news- 
papers, current literature, and Hbraries. Here we come 
to the most diversified of all the prepared foods for the 
mind. Most textbooks grow insipid and distasteful 
when compared with the rich and varied repast afforded 
by a worthy library. A teacher's chief business after 
making a child an observer is to make him a reader, a 
lover of books. Give a boy all the instruction of the 
universities, but fail to instill in him a love for litera- 
ture, and he has not been educated. Give him a love, an 
insatiate love for good books, and if he never sees a 
school he will be educated. Socrates said: "A home 
that possesses a library has a soul." He may not have 



FOOD 95 

intended to hint that a school without a Hbrary has no 
soul, but his words suggest that thought. Get a library. 
For the love of childhood, get a few good books and teach 
your children to come to them for pictures from the 
Sketch Book of an Irving, for sunshine from Green Fields 
and Running Brooks, and for courage taught by Little Men. 
Better a school with one text and a paper for current 
stories one week than five texts and no paper for six weeks. 
Turn in any direction you will, the postulate that mind 
may be fed reveals a multitude of healthful truths upheld 
and simplified by well-estabHshed physical law. Teachers 
and parents, in fact every one that has a life to live, should 
trace this truth as far as possible. It will be safe to say 
that new beauties and new faith will be revealed the farther 
we go, and all these shall be clustered about this central 
truth, — we do not get the mind in any other way than as 
we get the body. 



CHAPTER X 
STIMULI 

ALL matter has a point of fatigue. The most elastic 
watch spring reaches a round in its ceaseless tension 
when its buoyancy lags. Engineers have at times what 
they call a "tired locomotive." Fly wheels untouched 
by friction must have periods of rest. Push molecular 
structure beyond this point of fatigue and disaster ensues. 
So it is where vital forces are at work. Earth will sustain 
growth just so long, but autumn and winter must arrest 
this activity and permit both plant and soil to recuperate. 
The animal may have its periods of tireless rounds, but 
there must be a time when all muscles shall relax that 
Nature may offer her stimulus. Mental effort moves to 
a climax, then sinks to a lower level, and before it can 
again rise to its former power something must excite 
and quicken. 

From this condition or phenomenon of all existence 
this postulate is reached: Mind may be stimulated. 
This is interesting to follow, because in this lie some of the 
most practical questions presented in school and home. 
How can we keep mind or child life at its best ? How can 
we incite to better activities ? How can we cure stupidity ? 
How can we get zest, spirit, joy, and love into the proc- 
esses of learning? To answer these questions is to make 
a new heaven and a new earth for the public schools. 
Child the learner is as much a responsive phase of Nature 
as bird the singer or plant the grower, and one responds 
as readily to stimuli as the other. If this be true, then 
let the child lover, like the modern gardener, study those 

96 



STIMULI 97 

elements which, added to poor soil, will enrich, revivify, 
and restore until in the waste places of the mind, "instead 
of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the 
brier shall come up the myrtle tree. " 

In making this search the natural world again should 
be the basis. Let the teacher and the parent keep repeat- 
ing, "We get the mind under the same conditions as we 
get the body. " It is the very substance of modem truth, 
simplifying, because it unifies, all thought. Scientific 
experiment has demonstrated with the accuracy of mathe- 
matics and established for all time that the brain, the seat 
of the mind, is, so far as known, the organ most susceptible 
to impressions. Due to this impressionable quahty, sleep 
has been weighed, thought has been pictured, fatigue has 
been measured to the millionth of an inch. Under this 
persistent search for truth there are some vital facts to 
which the worker with the child may pin his faith with 
full assurance that something stable has been found: 

Blood is the food of the brain, and through it all 

brain stimuli must reach the mjnd. 
Oxygen is Nature's central stimulus for the blood 

and mind. 
The food we eat and the way we eat it develops 

right or wrong stimuli in the blood and mind. 

It is apparent that such principles reveal that all efforts 
toward school improvement center in the development 
of a better body for every child. Have you a dull pupil- 
age or teacher in your community? Cleanse their lungs 
with fresh air, improve their blood with proper tempera- 
tures and pure food and water, then history lessons will 
not fret their tempers. "But," says one, "this fresh air, 
better water, and adjusted temperatures will not work 

7 



98 GROWING A LIFE 

out all things. Besides, I teach in the country, where 
the [children are fine, hungry animals, well fed, well 
clothed, and well housed. They need other stimuli than 
oxygen and food." 

There are needs for other stimuli, it is true, and they 
shall be sought, but let one who speaks knowingly of the 
country boy or girl spend an hour or two in tracing the 
air and food supply of the country child and it will be seen 
that these things apply to him as well as to his city cou- 
sin. First, he has unlimited quantities of food; second, 
in these, fats and sugars predominate; third, the water 
supply is often furnished by surface drainage; fourth, he 
sleeps in a room in which windows are usually kept closed 
in winter and often in summer; fifth, all foods and air 
are taken without any knowledge of their relative values, 
or modes of use. What do you think Mrs. Rorer would 
say regarding the dinners children generally eat? What 
would be Horace Fletcher's comment on the process of 
mastication and deglutition? And what would Bernard 
McFadden say of such an atmosphere? **But," replies a 
teacher, **they have nothing whatever to say about it; and 
besides, it would be worth all of Mrs. Rorer's scientific 
cooking, Horace Fletcher's fletcherism, and the life of any 
physical culturist to criticize the boys and girls of my 
community on these points." 

There is the rub; a challenging question which should 
be fairly met, too often receives an evasive reply. Let 
the American school make such excuse as it will, but 
let it beware how it imputes a lack of receptivity to the 
American home. The home makers in town and country 
are seeking light as never before. The farmer has 
thrown aside the weekly message from market and 
experiment station and by rural delivery and telephone 



STIMULI 99 

is daily in touch with the latest and best. The mothers 
of the rural districts are calling as never before for 
all lines of comfort, sanitation, and convenience, which 
extended so partially over the city a few decades ago, 
to swing out into God's good garden, the country, and 
include them and their children. It is moving out, 
far out, through many excellent farm journals, countless 
inexpensive books, thousands of splendid country schools, 
practical courses of domestic science, visits to university 
farm schools on free trains, until the American farm home 
is becoming the admiration and the envy of the thinking 
world. No capable teacher will find an obstruction in the 
unreceptive attitude of the home. As a rule, the home 
welcomes aid with an earnest entreaty for more light. 

What really frightens the teacher is her own incom- 
petence. Yet it is not her fault. It lies in our Amer- 
ican education. It comes from farther back than our 
educational history. It is one of those sacred, musty, 
vacuous heirlooms which the Dark Ages bequeathed 
along with other beautiful but belittling relics, such as the 
divine right of kings, titles of nobility, and a state church. 
Turning students' faces toward the past rather than the 
present or outward to the future is a curse of study. 

Yet in pursuance of this, the mighty public-school sys- 
tem yearly turns its thousands into the shops, factories, 
churches, and farms to display a weakness begotten 
because, in their training, they secured after much toil 
a little Latin and less Greek. They could have well sub- 
stituted for these two branches another two which the 
University of Success and the School of Hard Knocks ele- 
vate above all other branches, good health and initiative. 
Dr. G. Stanley Hall, when he said that the time was 
coming when the universities would permit entrance 



loo GROWING A LIFE 

to their courses of study if the applicant read well a 
chapter from the Bible, should have added perhaps an- 
other requirement — a healthy body. Let us go further 
and say the pupils of this country may not lack health, 
they may be readers of good EngHsh, but we wager that 
they could find additional power if they would lay aside 
algebra, Latin, geometry, Greek, and Roman and Greek 
mythology for practical English, domestic science, seed 
selection, modem sanitation, fietcherism, and many other 
live, twentieth-century subjects lying within that sacred 
volume, Initiative. 

By as accurate computation as you arrive at the dis- 
tance between two objects or the amount of interest due 
at a certain time, science develops two truths pertain- 
ing to mind and body, known and accepted among men: 

Hard brain work lessens the power of the body. 
Hard muscular work reduces for a time the power 

of the brain. 
The best and most natural stimulus for fatigued 

muscles and brain is rest. 

Watch an individual or a class think, and invariably 
you will observe, without the use of other scientific appa- 
ratus than eye or ear, the blood leap to electrify eyes and 
cheeks, to move thought to gesture, to quicken voice 
and animate muscles, until at some turning point the 
machinery will refuse to go and will send out danger 
signals in yawns and stretches, sighs, and inattention. 
Nature can give no better signals to warn you that think- 
ing in the recitation is over. Scolding is waste; ques- 
tioning might as well cease, and the lecture be broken 
off; a warning was sent a few moments ago to stop, to 
change, to rest, but some one was too dull or too blind 



STIMULI loi 

to see, so Nature is going to stop regardless of class hours 
or signals. On the other hand, see that big, strapping 
fellow as he comes panting from the baseball field! He 
is exhausted as he sinks into the recitation seat, and you 
get no work out of him until after a quiet hour, or even a 
night's sleep, he presents himself next day fit for duty. 
Do not fret, do not call upon him. Advise him if you 
will how and when physical exercise may be taken so 
that it will not cheat him out of a good hour's mental 
work, but do not scold or drive. Now he could not think 
though a hundred goads be put upon his back or mind. 
Wait and assist, and next day he will repay you with 
sledge-hammer blows that will make arithmetic look 
insignificant. Thus, it is seen, we have a complex 
machine in this child — one who thinks with his muscles 
and acts with his brains. 

There is no condition of growth where the toxin of 
fatigue is not found. No sail but what needs another 
element; no individual always at his best; no mind but 
what under proper stimulus would arrive at infinite pro- 
portions. That sainted soul Dr. WiUiam James, who has 
passed from this restricted sphere over into divine 
activity, out of his wisdom said that he was convinced 
that mind was content to exist in one or, at most, a few 
mental strata when beyond was a countless nimiber of 
strata which the mind could and would penetrate under 
proper stimuli. It is the supreme business of home and 
school to secure these and further to search far and near 
for such antitoxin as will insure childhood the best pro- 
tection against the pernicious influences of mental and 
physical poisons. 

Rest; it is an enigmatical word. How in boyish sur- 
prise came the discovery that there was no such thing 



I02 GROWING A LIFE 

as a stop, a cessation, a disconnection in Nature. Pause, 
action, inertia, motion, decay, growth, life, and death 
are just a few words that modify man's view of Nature's 
ceaseless and eternal progress. Divine activity is rest. 
Of the natural stimuli for the body there is none sur- 
passing sweet and wholesome sleep. It is the business 
of the teacher to know the hours and the nature of chil- 
dren's sleep. "At what time did you retire last night, 
and at what time did you arise this morning?" will often 
shed a far stronger light on lesson getting, stupefaction, 
and class standing than any other ten questions. The 
restlessness of the pupil, calling forth stem criticism, 
could have been understood by looking at the open 
mouth. Adenoids refuse to let him sleep soundly, blood 
is impoverished, nerve neurons are starved, and we 
strike out at neglected childhood. 

There is a straining to make the grades; there is a 
desire to stand well in examinations, to get first or second 
place in a class of forty, which is breaking down the 
nerves of many of our best children. The schools do 
not carry the burden of all this crime, for loving but 
ambitious and thoughtless parents play the leading part. 
"I try to get my daughter to retire at ten o'clock, but 
she steadily refuses to do so, saying that she cannot make 
the grades and meet the work of her competitors; so 
often, waking at twelve o'clock at night, I find my girl 
still bending over her books." 

With no wish to be melodramatic, let it be said that 
often this sort of thing ends with a mother and father 
bending over that same daughter cold in death, her 
young life destroyed by over-stimuli of the nervous sys- 
tem, superinduced by neglect and false ambitions at 
school and home. She nor her parents nor her teacher 



STIMULI 103 

kept the law which says, ''When the nuclei of the neu- 
rons are already shriveled by fatigue, it is perilous to tax 
them further. Leaders of childhood, discuss rest and 
sleep with your children, assist them in coming to you 
daily with the nuclei of the nerve cells large, round, 
smooth, and regular. Take up physical inspection, put 
away the honor roll for a season, cut out overstrain in 
football, basket ball, and examinations. Introduce 
healthful games, but get sleep and needed repose." 

This is no attack on exercise. Exercise is Nature's 
divine tonic. It is the chief foe of decay, the elixir of 
physical and mental life. Did "Dodd" become stupid 
and wicked? Then, you remember, was the time his 
real teacher sent him for a bucket of water. Did Dodd 
become dangerous? Then the resourceful teacher 
turned all of his pent-up wrath into a race against time, 
by saying, "Dodd, my boy, you see that oak tree in the 
distance? I should like to see you run, touch it, and 
get back to me in so many seconds." Thousands who 
read The Evolution of ''Dodd'' sneered at it, and the next 
day went to their schools to enjoy the regular battles 
of fuss, fume, and fight. Others read it, wished they 
might do just such a thing with the little miscreants they 
had, but with the everlasting round of "readin', 'ritin', 
and 'rithmetic" where could such things come in? O 
tempora, O mores! It will be the cry until the fool- 
killer finishes his work. In the meantime, or in good 
time, the child lover that is bringing things to pass is 
studying how to make her children good animals that 
their lessons may be better, their tongues and feet 
quieter, and that she, too, may have a chance to be happy. 

Is there a school without a playground? Then it is 
without an escape valve. Is there a school without a 



104 GROW IX G A LIFE 

regular time for calisthenics? Then it is a fuss box, 
and a hatchery for ansmics. A bad word, that last. 
Yes, but you could take one describing whiter faces, 
duller eyes, noisier feet, and poorer digestions and yet 
not do justice to the school without physical training 
exercises. Is there a school without games and sports 
directed by the teacher? Then do not call it modem, 
because the latest and best turn made by education is 
toward the children's playgroimd exercises. Is there a 
school large enough for basket ball, baseball, football, 
t€ther-ball, and tennis that passes by these forms of 
exercise? Then, in truth, they are Hke Sir Latmfal, who 
mistook the master spirit of his life for a beggar, in 
that they are ignoring the master spirits of childhood 
— joy and health — to reach the beggars' routine, texts 
and form. Away with such deadening trash for a little 
while! Cry, "It doesn't matter, after all," and it does 
not. Think after all that when you teach most, per- 
haps you teach least. Shout, "Let us be thankful for 
the ink left in the inkstand"; "Many a poem is marred 
by a superfluous verse." Paraphrase, interpolate, appro- 
priate, and exclaim, "Let us be thankful for the books 
unused, in the schoolroom. Many a school is made by 
a football center rush." 

Exercise, due to the reaction quality of the mind, 
belongs to mind in itself. How do we acquire a good 
biceps? By exercise. How do we acquire strong senso- 
rium, strong thought, feeling, and will? In the very same 
way, by exercise. If we would have children grow minds 
of roimded proportions let them think roundly. The 
blacksmith runs to arm, the skiSman runs to back, while 
the glutton develops the neck. Too often our schoolrooms 
develop one-sided minds. Every lesson, ever>' piece of 



STIMULI los 

work given the children, should have a threefold test in it, 
— how strong can you think? how strong can you feel? 
how strong can you do ? Mark the word "strong' ' ; children 
do not care to waste their time in breaking straws or jump- 
ing cracks in the floor; they want to conquer something 
worthy of their metal. "Son," said a \dsiting friend to 
a four-year-old boy, "are you going away on the chu-chu 
train ? " " No, " said the Httle man, stiffening perceptibly, 
but with never a side glance, "I am going away on the 
four-twenty train." His mother talked to her boy in 
English; he thought in English, and answered in that 
language. 

The mental exercises in reading, \\a*iting, and arithmetic 
are too often dead weight. No stimuli, no taste, no 
exciting, alluring tang. The child is a strange being whose 
powers we can scarce define. Wordsworth Hfts the veil 
and reveals the child's early status: 

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And Cometh from afar: 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home." 

That is better pedagogy than many ever read or know. 
It bids us treat the child as a thing of power, not a thing 
to snivel over. A mother noticed the approach of lowering 
clouds at about the time her little eight-year-old girl was 
released from school, and knowing that her way home 
took her over a stream and through a wood, went Co 
meet her child. The storm burst in a fury of Hghtning, 
rain, and thimder; and just as the dismayed mother 



io6 GROWING A LIFE 

reached the edge of the wood she found her little girl 
drenched, anxious to see her, but cahn. At home the 
mother asked if she were not frightened when she reached 
the stream, and the little girl repHed: **Yes, I was at 
first, but just then some verses we repeat popped into my 
mind and I just kept saying them, and by the time I saw 
you I was not scared much. You see, mother, the teacher 
has us sing and repeat, 

" 'Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircHng gloom, 

Lead Thou me on ; 
The night is dark, and I am far from home, 

Lead Thou me on. 
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene; one step enough for me.* " 

That teacher should be emulated in ignoring such 
obnoxious, stilted language exercises as fill most of our 
language texts and giving the child a real exercise which 
proved not only a stimulus, but presented a support in 
time of trial and need. 

Variety is not only the spice of life, but it is one of 
the greatest mental and physical stimulants known. It 
may appear in arrangement. Memory brings visions of 
school "marms" and school masters that never changed. 
How we hoped for change, longed for change, yea, even 
prayed for change! But the same voice greeted us, the 
same eyes rolled at us, the same hair rose and fell, the same 
collar enthralled the same neck, and the same dress clasped 
the changeless body of our teacher day after day. The 
room partook of the nature of this death-dealing leader. 
The desks had marks they bore the first morning. 
The teacher's desk and chair were never moved. We felt 
sure he wotild sit just at the same place, at the very 
point, to be more exact, to-day that he did yesterday. 



STIMULI 107 

He must sit exact, or he could not doze with assurance. 
The texts, the recitations, the round of school duties 
were fixed. Classes were called at the same time, and 
in the same way, and we were led into our reading 
stall to feed for so many minutes on facts of reading. 
** Facts, sir, facts, nothing but facts," was the law here, 
as with Mr. Choakumchild. Did a boy see an incident 
of history protruding and reach to get it? Whack went 
the teacher's board of fact, and back into the reading 
stall went the little hand. Over in literature, through the 
cracks of the reading pen, we could see such inviting 
green fields and lovely flowers. But any little imagination 
raising its head to look over was struck by this cudgel of 
facts, "reading facts only at this time, " and the sunshine 
and green fields were shut out. 

From stall to stall we were led, no joy but what must be 
stolen, laughter a crime, freedom of expression anath- 
ematized, and thus chained in the lockstep of unnatural 
routine we moved on to discontent, rebellion, and dismay. 

** Hold, " some one may cry, "turn our eyes in the direc- 
tion of enlightenment and progress!" It is well to look 
into Dante's Inferno occasionally that we may better 
interpret Milton's heaven. The muck and mire give 
true emphasis to the spotless white of the Hly or to the 
clear blue of the arching sky. Cromwell, when shown his 
portrait, discovered not his face full of seams and jagged 
with warts but another's, and blurted, " Paint me as I am. " 
The unnatural dwarfing and destroying monotony of 
countless homes and schools of the earth needs painting 
as it is. The father who builds a cabin, a cottage, or a 
palace should know he builds but a prison pen if he leaves 
life and laughter, song and story, outside. The mother 
is not one who merely bears children, but one who, having 



io8 GROWING A LIFE 

caught a vision of the divinity and solemnity of mother- 
hood, surmounts squalor as did Nancy Hanks Lincoln, 
or seductive wealth as did Anne Hill Lee, to bring light and 
life to their children. Their sons were not children of fate 
or destiny. Under God they were, as every child is and will 
ever be, the children of life's stimuli furnished by mothers, 
fathers, and life's schools. The teacher is not a knowledge 
dispenser, a diploma holder, a lesson hearer, a salary grab- 
ber, a school keeper, or child ogre ; but a teacher is a child 
lover, a school joy, a salary winner, a life interpreter, a 
splendid leader, and all in all a dispenser of natural stimuli. 

Hear the dynamo of the public school himmiing its 
song of power? Here pupils, teacher, and homes are 
connected with live wires of sympathy, cooperation, and 
respect. Here is continuous teacher service, growing 
salary, happy pupilage, community pride, and best of all, 
competent young life passing to success in the world. 
Whence comes all this? Within there is a teacher who 
knows and believes, it may be only a little, but, like all 
real men and women, she knows and believes that little 
intensely. She knows that this is the twentieth century, 
the electrical epoch of history. She knows that to be a 
working part of this age is a blessing and privilege coveted 
by milHons who toiled, hoped, and died that they might 
possess it. She knows that rank has passed and that the 
greatest of all is he who serves. She believes no form of 
service known to man is more holy, more usefiil, or quite 
so joyous as keeping childhood, sometimes called teaching. 
Her creed is that which is done on the very winds of 
present progress and written deep in the tablets of the 
hearts of those who know. 

Henry van Dyke voices a part of it for her and them 
when he writes: " To be glad of life because it gives you 



STIMULI 109 

the chance to love and to work and to play and to look 
up at the stars. To be satisfied with your possessions but 
not contented with yourself until you have made the best 
of them. To despise nothing in the world except false- 
hood and meanness and to fear nothing except cowardice. 
To be governed by your admirations rather than by your 
disgusts; to covet nothing that is your neighbor's except 
his kindness of heart and gentleness of manner. To think 
seldom of your enemies, often of your friends, and every 
day of Christ ; and to spend as much time as you can with 
body and with spirit in God's out of doors. These are 
little guideposts on the footpath to peace. " 

"I shall get my happiness out of my work or I shall 
never get it at all. " " Every child shall, so far as concerns 
me, have the best chance in life possible. " " The business 
of being bom to a life of hopeless ignorance shall be 
reduced to a minimum." She knows and believes these 
things and, like Luther, though every shingle upon her 
little schoolhouse were a devil demanding that she bring 
not these views to her children, yet would she do it. 

There has been plan in it all. Never did the coming of 
kings and queens demand more preparation than the 
coming of these school children, the true lords and ladies 
of the earth, has demanded of her, the ruler of their 
schoolroom, the custodian of their lives. 

Through their eyes they must commune with the beau- 
tiful, so the pictures are chosen for the walls, the stencil 
for the borders, the curtains so white and dainty for the 
windows, the spread so clean and charming for the table. 
Then the library must have its draping. No library may 
be there? It will be there either when she comes or a 
little later, because it is a part of her very life, this belief 
that there is no school or home without a library. So 



no GROWING A LIFE 

the pretty baize cloth is found and put away with the 
half-dozen books she is going to place in her children's 
library, just to implant within them a love for books. This 
reminds her that she has set her heart on having a Pupils* 
Reading Circle; so the bulletin put forth by the state is 
found and tucked away in her package of school blessings. 
Hands must be busy; so pretty papers for cutting and 
drawing, blocks, games and globes, splints, and her old box 
of pretty colored beans are garnered in, all to make a feast 
which will stimulate every little hand. God's out of doors ! 
She must never forget that whatever else young hearts may 
learn, they must never fail to learn how good and generous 
is Mother Earth. So with visions of a school yard made 
receptive by rakes, hoes, and plows in the hands of eager, 
joyous children, the sowing of seed, the waiting, and then 
the clinging vine and the wondrous harvest, she tucks 
away packages of seeds, — morning-glory, aster, larkspur, 
and zinnia. The ears of those blessed children must be 
turned from the coarse and the untrue, so song books 
obtained from a piano company, a mere advertisement 
in the eyes of the unthinking, but to her a wellspring of 
opportunity, are taken along; for in them are some sweet 
melodies. There is " Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground, " 
" Suwanee River, " "Lead, Kindly Light " ; and how much 
laughter shall ring out when they are taught to sing rollick- 
ing old ** Yankee Doodle, " and " Dixie " ! It reminds her 
that the school is the nation's best drill master in patriot- 
ism. So, for fear the flag may be missing, she finds one, 
that its beauty may bless the very first day. With a 
corner for her Parker's Talks on Teaching, her monthly 
plan books, Drummond's addresses for tone, and Rhymes 
of Childhood for a smile-maker on Friday afternoons, she 
has come down to live with these children. 



STIMULI III 

Approach the school building, and the neat and attrac- 
tive yard seems to reflect the creed, "We believe; we are 
a part of all we meet.'* Within, you find a group of 
bright-eyed young Americans at work. Hair, clothing, 
shoes, desks, radiate cleanliness and care. Over there is 
a bit of motto in white letters. Some one explains that 
this is a part of character-building work which runs through 
the whole of the term's plan. The walls, the windows, 
and the library present cheerful aspects because of plans 
made in stmimer. The cozy comer is not only inviting 
with the flag floating above it, but down on the border 
line a window-box records wireless messages from the cool 
green world without. The recitations, the drills, the seat 
work, the walls and blackboards, the very atmosphere 
' — all are dynamic with stimuli. Chief of all, center of all, 
stands the smiling, well-groomed teacher, low yet com- 
manding of voice, — the storage battery of this vibrant 
school center. 

There is an earnest desire that as much as possible 
weakness and sorrow be kept from earth's children. 
There is an earnest cry for forceful leadership. The 
petition ascends to the Arbiter of all destiny to give every 
child a positive stimulus to call father, mother, or teacher. 
We may build our school buildings of marble and granite, 
we may pile our texts mountain high, yet if we employ 
teachers who are pigmies in personality it would be better 
that children should walk once each day about a truly 
great man, look into his face a few moments, and go 
away. Personality is the divinest force on earth. Positive 
personality is leadership in some one direction. It is the 
mark God places upon every soul to differentiate if from 
all others in possibility. To Homer it was poetry; to 
Csesar it was statesmanship; to Edison it was invention; 



112 GROWING A LIFE 

to Carnegie it was benefaction; to Christ it was Messiah- 
ship. It belongs as much to the low as to the high, to 
the foolish as to the wise, to the rogue as to the good man; 
but half the universe lives unconscious of its existence. 
It makes the man of one talent as supreme as the man with 
ten talents. It is the measure of God within every man; 
and since any of the Infinite is infinite, it makes us of 
equal measure. Elbert Hubbard gives a pretty picture 
of this stimulus working in a modest comer. Out of grati- 
tude to him, and with a profound faith that it is a picture 
of the true school, such as Socrates, Aristotle, and Froebel 
with other kindred souls would have enjoyed, this descrip- 
tion, entitled "The New Education,'* is placed here. 

"You will remember that very often we used to be told 
that 'children should be seen, not heard. ' We know better 
now — let the babies talk. God bless 'em! The healthy, 
active child is full of impressions, and that he should 
express himself is just as natural as for a bird to sing. It 
is Nature's way of giving growth — no one knows a thing 
for sure until he tells it to some one else. We deepen 
impressions by recounting them, and habitually to sup- 
press and repress the child when he wants to tell of the 
curious things he has seen is to display a two-by-four 
acimien. Not long ago, on a horseback ride of a hundred 
miles or more, I came to an out-of-the-way 'Deestrick 
School,' just such a one as you see every few miles all 
over New York state. This particular schoolhouse would 
not have attracted my attention especially, had I not 
noticed that nearly half the school lot was taken up with 
a garden and flower beds. No house was near, and it 
was apparent that this garden was the work of the teacher 
and the pupils. Straightway I dismounted, tied my 
horse, and walked into the schoolhouse. The teacher was 



STIMULI 113 

a man of middle age — a himchback, and one of the rarest, 
gentlest spirits I have ever met. Have you ever noticed 
what an alert, receptive, and beautiful soul is often housed 
in a misshaped body ? This man was modest and shy as a 
woman, and when I spoke of the flower beds he half 
apologized for them and tried to change the subject. 
When, after a few moments^ he reaHzed that my interest 
in his garden was something deeper than mere curiosity, 
he offered to go out with me and show me what had been 
done. So we walked out, and out behind us trooped the 
school of just fifteen pupils. 'You see,' he said, 'in winter 
we have sixty or more pupils, but the school is small now. 
I thought I would try the plan of teaching out of doors 
half the time, and to keep the girls and boys busy I just let 
each one have a flower bed. Some wanted to raise vege- 
tables, and of course I let them plant any seed they wished. 
The older children, girls or boys, helped the younger ones 
— it is lots of fun. When the weather is fine we are out 
here a good deal of the time, just working and talking.' 
"And that is the way this man taught, letting the chil- 
dren do things and talk. He explained to me that he was 
not an 'educated man,' and as I contradicted him, my eyes 
filled with tears. Not educated ? I wonder how many of 
us who call ourselves educated have a discipHned mind, 
and can call by name the forest birds in our vicinity? 
Do we know the bird notes when we hear them ? Can we 
with pencil outline the leaves of oak, elm, maple, chestnut, 
hazel, walnut, birch or beech trees, so others familiar with 
these trees can recognize them ? Do we know by name or 
at sight the insects that fill the summer nights with melody ? 
Do we know whether the katydid, cricket, and locust 'sing' 
with mouth, wings or feet? Do we know what they feed 
upon, how long they live, and what becomes of the tree- 



114 GROWING A LIFE 

toad in winter? Do we know for sure how much a bushel 
of wheat weighs? I wonder what it is to be educated? 

''Here was a man seemingly sore smitten by the hand 
of Fate, yet whose heart was filled with sympathy and 
love. He had no quarrel either with the world or with 
Destiny. He was childless that he might love all chil- 
dren, and that his heart might go out to every living thing. 

"The trustees of the school did not take much interest 
in methods, I found, so they let the teacher have his way; 
and I have since been told that the best schools are those 
where the trustees or directors take no interest in the 
institution. 

"A rare collection of birds' eggs, fungi, and forest leaves 
had been made, and I was shown an outline drawing of 
all the leaves in the garden. This idea of drawing a pic- 
ture of the object led to much closer observation, the 
teacher thought. And when, on questioning some of the 
children, I found that the whole school took a semi-weekly 
ramble through the woods, and made close studies of the 
wild birds and insects as well, it came to me that this man, 
afar from any 'intellectual center,' was working out a 
pedagogic system that science could never improve upon. 

"Whether the little man realized this or not I cannot 
say, but I do not think he guessed the greatness of his work 
and methods. It was all so simple — he did the thing 
he liked to do, and led the children out, and they followed 
because they loved the man, and soon loved the things 
that he loved. 

' ' Science seeks to simplify. This country school teacher, 
doing his own little work in his own little way, was a true 
scientist. And he was also a great teacher: he was mold- 
ing human lives, and filhng the minds of his children 
with beautiful and useful impressions." 



STIMULI IIS 

After disclosing clearly that habit rests upon a physical 
basis and is due to pathways through the nerve centers 
carved by repeated mental discharges, James shows the 
beneficence of this plan. He quotes Dr. Carpenter to 
prove that ** habit simplifies the movements required to 
achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and 
diminishes fatigue." 



CHAPTER XI 
TRAINING 

I WENT into my garden one morning when the spirit 
of spring was wooing the sleeping Hfe in the earth 
to come forth. I saw that the little yearling peach was 
putting on its leafy wings for the year's flight. It grew 
near a ragged, leaning fence; and I noticed with intent 
to correct that the top of the little tree, bent by a touch 
of some sort, was passing beneath a strip of wood, which 
in time would cause a crooked growth. I was called 
away, and it was late autimm before I again walked that 
way. There was my peach tree, crooked and ugly from 
a season of untrained, unassisted growth, still battling 
with an unfeeling fence. I attempted to do what I should 
have done six months before, bend it down and draw it 
from beneath the oaken strip; but it had grown beyond 
me. The plasticity in the tender sprout of a few months 
before had become a stubborn fixity in the two-year-old 
plant. It would break before it would bend. I must 
move the fence if I would relieve the situation, and even 
then the mistake could be only partially corrected. 

Nature may be directed at a certain time and place by 
the weight of the pebble or the pressure of a child's finger; 
but neglected for a time, granite walls crumble as chalk 
before it, and a people's defense in homes and stores is 
swept away like straws. In his childish way little Peter 
of Holland knew this when he heard the sound of trickling 
water as he played about the dike. For generations 
in the home it had been dinned into the ears of Dutch 
children that trickling water along the dike might mean 

ii6 



TRAINING 117 

a leak, and a leak might mean ruin and death. So Peter, 
as you know, clacked his wooden shoes until he found the 
running water. It was a leak, and it was fast crumbling 
the earth, and he must run to tell. But no, the leak was 
growing; it must be stopped now. What could be found ? 
There was nothing in sight. "Quick," said a small 
voice, ''thrust in your finger" — and in went the chubby 
finger of Dutch Peter. It is an old tale. We remember 
how the finger stayed, stayed until finger, hand, arm, 
and the child himself grew numb from waiting for the help 
that came so slowly, but came at last. Such stories will 
be ever new because they tell of truths coexistent and 
coextensive with the primal heart. 

This direction given to forces of Nature by the plas- 
ticity of matter is at once the substance of all training. 
Ignorant of conditions, blindly guessing, men had spent 
millions trying to train the Mississippi to clear its mouth 
of the silt and sand which crippled the commerce of its 
whole system. The eye of Captain Eads read the law 
under which its waters acted, and by means of jetties the 
habits of the Mississippi changed and there was harmony 
between man's desire and Nature. 

Within the home of Helen Keller the life of a little 
girl was being directed without the possibilities of de- 
velopment in her restricted senses being discerned. But 
with Miss Sullivan came law and light, and the confined 
soul found channels of discharge which have made 
Helen Keller a miracle and a blessing to the world. 

Under this immutable law of the material and the imma- 
terial, that change may be made with ease at certain 
periods and with difficulty at others, education meets 
its severest challenge. The pitiless finger of an all-wise, 
omnipotent law points to mind and says to mothers, 



ii8 CROWING A LIFE 

fathers, and teachers: "Whatsoever influences you wish 
to exert, exert them now within this space of time, or have 
but little hope of future effort. " Under the guidance of 
habit, your soul, mine, and every other is moving to its 
education. Shall it be a Czolgosz or a McKinley , an Arnold 
or a Washington, a Catherine de* Medici or a Frances 
E. Willard, a Judas or a Saviour ? This moment, right here, 
right in this room at this more than commonplace time, 
with these unpromising surroundings, is to decide. Here 
in the temple in the silent hour the voice calls, "Samuel," 
and he doubts. It calls again, and without a discerning, 
sensitive, well-poised student of childhood like Eli minis- 
tering in the temple, Israel's line of prophets would have 
perished and the coming of the Lord's evangel been delayed. 

Where can the law of direction for mind be traced? 
Everywhere. The mountains exist because they obey the 
law of adhesion and cohesion. When the giant forces of 
Nature discharged through fissures, breaking, tearing, and 
rolling up the earth as a scroll, it yielded as paper for awhile 
but as time passed grew firm as adamant. The rivers 
exist because water has a plasticity that sends the raindrop 
rolling down the mountain side, yet a rigidity that holds it 
together until other raindrops are met and unite with it on 
its journey to the sea. The very stars have been trained 
to order by the obedience of their plastic atoms. There 
was a time when the mountains, resisting cohesion and 
adhesion beyond a certain degree, would have rushed to 
disintegration. There was a moment when the raindrop 
felt a resistance to these same forces, and had it yielded 
the valleys would have waited in vain for "the complain- 
ing brooks which make the meadows green." 

Under the law of continuity this plasticity passes from 
the inorganic to the organic. The nerves and the brain 



TRAINING 119 

are the most plastic of all known organisms. Dr. William 
James says that for our first proposition in directing mind 
we may without hesitation lay down the following: 
*'The phenomena of habit in living beings are due 
to the plasticity of the organic material of which their 
bodies are composed. " 

Some twenty years ago the psychological world awoke 
to find itself not famous, but organized. What Darwin, 
Huxley, and Spencer had done with the science of Nature, 
WilHam James had done with the science of the soul. He 
placed it within the range of microscope, test tube, and dis- 
secting knife. Than his, there has been no style more 
pleasing, no statement more convincing. Any teacher 
who has read such chapters in his books as that on habit 
realizes they are the result of inspiration. His deductions 
from Nature on mind direction are the best thus far written, 
and will be used to illtmiine this talk on mental training. 

Referring to habit's economy of nervous and muscular 
energy, Mr. James entirely agrees with Dr. Maudsley 
that "if an act became no easier after being done several 
times, if the careful direction of consciousness were neces- 
sary to its accomplishment on each occasion, it is evident 
that the whole activity of a lifetime would be confined to 
one or two deeds — that no progress could take place in 
development. A man might be occupied all day dressing 
and undressing himself; the attitude of his body would 
absorb all his attention and energy. The washing of his 
hands or the fastening of a button would be as difficult to 
him on each occasion as to the child on its first trial ; and 
he would, furthermore, be completely exhausted by his 
exertions. . . . It is impossible for an individual to 
realize how much he owes to its automatic agency until 
disease has impaired its ftmctions, " 



I20 GROWING A LIFE 

James, in quoting Carpenter, adds to the tribute which 
the world has ever paid to backbone when he points out 
the spinal cord as the real "backbone" or center of the sub- 
conscious life. To all of us who are interested in "back- 
bone" for ourselves and others, it would be well right now 
to realize that education, or true mental growth, lies in 
training this wonderful organism of subconscious powers 
to discharge its currents in accurate and well-grooved 
channels. 

"Secondly, habit diminishes the conscious attention 
with which our acts are performed. The lower nerve 
centers become with training great storehouses of nervous 
events. The alphabet to the child at first was a serious 
challenge to the higher nerve centers. Every movement 
to grasp *A ' was attended by a succession of nervous events 
which produced 'confusion worse confounded.' But one 
day the child found the pictured *A'. This started the 
tongue to wagging, and before it could be stopped the 
alphabet was said. Mind upon that day took the alpha- 
bet down into the exchange of habitual action, and placed 
it on the proper wire of the upper nerve centers for future 
use. Then it held its head higher the next day because 
it found its workshop so clear of alphabetical rubbish. 
It had room to spread its growing wings of conscious 
ideation. 

"While we are learning to walk, to ride, to swim, 
skate, fence, write, play, or sing, we interrupt ourselves 
at every step by unnecessary movements and false notes. 
When we are proficients, on the contrary, the results 
not only follow with the very minimum of muscular action 
requisite to bring them forth, they also follow from a sin- 
gle instantaneous 'cue.' The marksman sees the bird, and, 
before he knows it, he has aimed and shot. A gleam in 



TRAINING 121 

his adversary's eye, a momentary pressure from his rapier, 
and the fencer finds that instantly he has made the right 
parry and return. A glance at the musical hieroglyphics, 
and the pianist's fingers have rippled through a shower of 
notes. And not only is it the right thing at the right time 
that we thus involuntarily do, but the wrong thing also, if it 
be an habitual thing. Who is there that has never wound up 
his watch on taking off his waistcoat in the daj^ime, or taken 
his latchkey out on arriving at the doorstep of a friend? 
Very absent-minded persons in going to their bedroom to 
dress for dinner have been known to take off one garment 
after another and finally to get into bed, merely because that 
was the habitual issue of the first few movements when per- 
formed at a later hour. ... We all of us have a definite 
routine manner of performing certain daily offices con- 
nected with the toilet, with the opening and shutting of 
familiar cupboards, and the like. . . . But our higher 
thought-centres know hardly anything about the matter. " 

In a subsequent paragraph Dr. James sums up this 
whole subject of mental training under natural law. It 
is the most enlightening, most satisfactory, and practical 
paragraph in modem pedagogy or psychology. Wherever 
there is mind to develop, this truth should appear to sim- 
plify, to guide, and to support. By the parent and teacher 
it should be rated the eleventh commandment — since after 
God and in God is the child. To every soul that sees this 
truth it should appear as a key which unlocks every door 
of self, revealing personal possibilities and untold power. 

"The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our 
nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to 
fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon 
the interest of the fund. For this we must make auto- 
matic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful 



122 GROWING A LIFE 

actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways 
that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should 
guard against the plague. The more of the details of our 
daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of 
automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be 
set free for their own proper work. There is no more 
miserable human being than one in whom nothing is 
habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of 
every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising 
and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every 
bit of work, are subjects of express volitional dehberation. 
P'ull half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or 
regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in 
him as practically not to exist for his consciousness 
at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in 
any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set 
the matter right. " 

The inmates of every schoolroom and every home should 
ponder deeply these truths. Our mental workshops 
should be arranged in conscious and subconscious depart- 
ments. In the upper chamber, conscious thought should 
command; in the lower, automatism. Now is the time 
to begin separating the trivial from the important, the 
automatic from the conscious, the mechanical from the 
sentient; every study of the curriculum has its machinery, 
which must be put down in the cellar of subconsciousness. 
Open the sluices and pitch in the fundamental processes 
of mathematics; make addition, subtraction, and all 
such operations in numbers not only second nature but a 
habit many times stronger than nature. In reading, articu- 
late, enunciate, and visualize, and articulate, enunciate, 
and visuaHze again, until all such fly wheels, eccentrics, 
and journals of mechanical reading are placed in the 



TRAINING 123 

powerliouse of subconsciousness. They must not appear 
in the high-school boy's Hfe at the fifteenth or sixteenth 
year as rusty junk in the fonn of stumbHng, blundering 
word calHng. Clean the mouth of bad language whether 
or not we teach grammar. In the home, on the street, 
everywhere, keep the brain tract of clean language open 
by speaking correctly and writing correctly, until the 
currents of pure English move through them as naturally 
as water moves through God's continental groove, the 
Mississippi Valley. The parents of John Ruskin and of 
Lord Macaulay dug the pathways of language discharge 
so deep in their sons' brains by having them read, memo- 
rize, and write good English every day, that rules, regu- 
lations, and such skeletons of language were not found in 
their upper brain regions when the first went to write his 
Modern Painters and the other to sing the Battle of Ivry 
or cast in mold of deathless art the model English para- 
graph. Heave to, and systematically pack away in the 
boundless storeroom of the lower brain centers the details 
of personal and professional Hfe, that reason may have its 
perfect sway in the upper chambers of thought when 
serious problems arrive. 

Do you anticipate great things for your children? 
Here is the truth that truly makes them free. What 
was the power of Washington? The drill, the routine 
that determined in the boy of twelve the undercurrent of 
life and reserved unobstructed the tide of subsequent 
years upon which to float his schemes of war and state. 
What was the genius of Emerson? The clearing of 
brain tracts of useless rubbish by the plain living and 
high thinking of several generations of priestly ancestry; 
the training in his home to make verses, prayers, and 
orations daily for seven or eight years, until his brain 



124 GROWING A LIFE 

cells offered such glide and expansion to the old poetic 
images that one fine day they burst into the newest, 
finest frenzy known to letters in this hemisphere. 

So every story of worthy life runs along this groove 
of truth. Away with the doctrine of luck and partiality 
of Fate, sometimes called genius! Genius is merely an 
extraordinary way of doing ordinary things. Napoleon, 
denominated by his biographers a genius unparalleled, 
agreed with modern psychology when he said that his 
successes were the result of giving close attention to 
details. It is time that the training which shackles the 
life of rich or poor, the plodding or the brilHant, with 
preconceived opinions of their limitations, should be set 
aside. Under law life knows no limitation. Link the 
soul to an ideal, and the half-witted dunce becomes 
Johnson the lexicographer; the half -starved boy of 
Wales becomes Stanley the African explorer; and the 
half-developed poacher becomes Shakspere, the bard of 
genius. Let those who associate with children throw 
open wide the doors of schoolroom and home that Nature's 
laws may freely enter to awaken the children to a con- 
sciousness of divine power. 

What are some of the ways in which this complete life 
may be had ? How is this * ' edition de luxe ' ' of mentality 
issued? James summons to his assistance, in answering 
this question, two maxims from Professor Baines's chapter 
on The Moral Habits. First, in the acquisition of a new 
habit or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care 
to "launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative 
as possible." 

A primary teacher had consented to illustrate before 
an assembly oE teachers some methods of teaching reading 
to beginners. Those who lingered late in the assembly 



TRAINING 125 

room the afternoon preceding the day when the exposition 
was to be given, interestedly observed the movements of 
the busy teacher who was to develop the lesson, and above 
all noted with curious eyes the articles she fashioned 
and displayed. Deftly her fingers cut paper into the 
form of a star, skillfully tinfoil was brought into use, and 
then tacks and chalk were put to work. At last, stepping 
back, this primary teacher calmly surveyed the board 
with questioning eyes. After a correction here and there, 
into her eyes stole a light akin to that which shone 
in the eyes of the Master Architect when he looked upon 
his masterpiece, a world, and called it good. Then they 
saw her do a thing that excited deeper curiosity. Un- 
rolling two neat curtains and stringing them, she hung 
them with care over the chalk work she had placed upon 
the board. She then drew them back, peeped in, smiled, 
dropped them, and went away. 

Next morning the Httle ones were about her, big-eyed 
and trustful, yet startled by the strange crowd and place. 
But one glance at her face and all was well with them. 
With skill she unfolded before them things they knew and 
enjoyed. She placed upon the board certain stock words 
met before, and they stood every test she offered. Finally 
she said, ** Behind these curtains I have something pretty 
for you. " Instantly there was a chorus of ''Oh's" from 
open mouths, and many pairs of hands clasped and flut- 
tered with delight at the coming view. With just the right 
proportion of suspense she whetted the mental appetite, 
then when ciiriosity stood on tiptoe within each little 
mind (and in the mature crowd of onlookers, too) she 
parted the curtains. Looking at the creation of scissors 
and tinfoil, each child spoke in ecstasy the words, "A 
star." A few deft strokes of chalk, and "A star" was 



126 GROWING A LIFE 

fixed forever in the working vocabulary of these young 
Americans. 

We had witnessed the launching with decided initiative 
of something — a word. We had seen something more; 
we had seen demonstrated by teaching art a large 'portion 
of the line which separates the old pedagogy from the new. 
We had looked upon what was once, and is yet in many 
schoolrooms, a process of pain presented as a process of 
pleasure. We had watched plan and preparation map 
out a campaign against deficiencies of equipment, poverty 
of texts, and impoverished senses. A belated aide-de- 
camp once found Napoleon sprawled upon the palace 
floor at four o'clock in the morning, sticking pins in a map, 
and heard him exclaim in happy frenzy, "There, bravo, I 
have them ! " * * Have whom , sire ? ' ' asked the young aide. 
"The Austrian general and his entire army," replied 
Napoleon. History records how that pin marked the 
exact spot where, on June 14, 1800, he did have the Aus- 
trian anny on the battle field of Marengo. Just so had we 
beheld a captain of thought use her chalk, her tacks, and 
her curtains until, with as clear vision as ever the great 
Corsican knew, she saw a victory for her children on the 
morrow, and when that day came she as surely achieved 
a victory. 

Are we to spend any time with young minds? If so, 
then plain common sense demands that the greatest hap- 
piness as well as the greatest strength be secured from 
this contact; we must give to children the best we have, 
even the best that we can get. "John Milton, what are 
you going to do?" asked a friend of the beautiful boy of 
twelve. "If you please, sir," said the lad in tones like 
a silver bell, "I am going to write the greatest epic poem 
England ever can claim." Was this the boy speaking? 



TRAINING 127 

No, it was the wise plan, and loving vigil, the ceaseless 
toil of a father who had decided at the birth of this boy, 
and maybe before, that so far as a father could accomplish 
it, his son should go into life with a decided initiative. 

Examine the records of any worthy life, and you will 
find the distinct trace of a glowing enthusiasm which 
grooved it in channels of worthy habit. Said Mary, 
the mother of Washington, "Son, I regret you have killed 
my horse, but I would rather my son would kill all my 
horses than to tell an imtruth." "There is no genius in 
my work,'* said Charles Dickens. "The habit of record- 
ing what I observe is the only genius I possess." And 
Lincoln paid tribute to the enthusiasm of his mother 
when he said, "All I am or ever hope to be in life I owe 
to my angel mother." She denied the right of arduous 
pioneer duties to deprive her of the companionship and 
training of her little boy. 

"Well begun is half done," says the German proverb. 
All but a few of our fine arts are legacies from Greece, 
because within her borders there were men and women 
who lived and wrought as though they were possessed 
of the spirit of a god. "This one thing I do," was the 
watchword of Saint Paul, the greatest teacher of his 
day. A young man sitting in the back pew of a New 
England church heard the minister say, "The world 
has yet to know what a man can do who will give him- 
self unreservedly to God." The young man arose and 
came forward, and giving his hand, said, "God helping 
me, I shall try to be that man." That act of decided 
initiative determined the career of a D wight L. Moody. 

The curse of a thoughtless beginning can never be 
effaced. The mediocrity and misery of mankind are 
the offspring of homes and schools where the light 



128 GROWING A LIFE 

of intelligent enthusiasm never burns. Rugby of 
Arnold's day was only a fountain of love and faith for 
the boy. Build yoiu* Harvards of brick and stone as 
you please, but their sons will never attack the line of 
duty harder than with the ardor, the zeal, and the faith 
with which an Eliot inspires them. It would be better 
to-day, throughout the nation, if children could be kept 
from schools and homes where unstinted grind deadens 
the voice of hope, where eye and face of those who direct 
never blaze with earnestness and love of work and worker. 
The second James maxim quoted is: "Never suffer 
an exception to occur till the new habit is securely 
rooted in your life." There is nothing like success, 
except success. "Continuity of training is the great 
means of making the nervous system act infallibly right." 
The longest way around is the nearest way to the fire if 
you are sure you know that way and are not sure of any 
other. It does not matter so much how the child con- 
quers walking, speech, or the multiplication tables as 
that he does master them, and without exceptions. 
Here is the value of the beaten path, the blazed trail of 
mental discharge. Some minds are sufficient, as that of 
Boone, to make their road by the winds and stars; but 
to most a fallen tree, a notch, a footprint, or a path is 
necessary to keep them right. There is doubt whether 
the old schoolmaster who had his classes reduce their 
reasoning at last to a set rule, and set that rule up in 
memory as a guide for future faith and practice, was 
not superior to the modem instructor who claims that 
rule should never be set in book or mind. If I must 
find the dimension of a circle, let it be done swiftly, be- 
cause, knowing the radius, I have in memory a rule 
which says that the square of a radius times 3.1415926 



TRAINING 129 

invariably gives the area. The pathway of discharge 
is deep and clear in this direction. That groove was 
made in my brain cells by a stern old master who believed 
in the Scotch proverb, "It's dogged as does it." 

In a textbook exercise, in a memory test, in making 
the first public speech, in learning to leap a hedge or in 
conquering a taste for drink, never let an exception occur. 
vStart well and close well. In any undertaking by child 
life let the teacher and helper be on guard. There comes 
a severe test of memory and self-control. The youth 
begins his lines in front of a throng of upturned faces. 
They seem so strange, so unresponsive, so unlike the 
S3mipathetic face of mother as she helps him in his child- 
ish efforts. What if he should forget? The thought is 
father to the act — he is forgetting — horrors, he has 
forgotten! The world is reeling before his eyes, when 
at the back of the audience up rises some one with radiant 
face and with chin at an angle which lifts him from de- 
spair. It is teacher, as she had often appeared when she 
told him to stand firm — be a man — he could conquer 
an3rthing. Glorious, vAih. the movement of her lips, 
and her eyes of faith upon him, the next word leaps to 
memory. Out of the way now. Defeat! The rocks and 
shoals are behind, and bounding over the waves of con- 
scious power the youth lands his craft of expression safe 
in the harbor of success, because there was a pilot aboard 
ship that neither sltmibered nor slept. She was ever at 
the helm ^ to see that no exceptions occurred. 

Drill, drill, drill; review, review, re\'iew. Pick out 
the simple course which leads to the best, physically, 
mentally, and ethically. What the education of the 
present day needs most is simplifying, by pitching out 
of the window half the stuff we attempt to teach and 

Q 



I30 GROWING A LIFE 

more than half the methods by which we attempt to 
teach it. When shall we learn that conquering a few 
words daily, just one or two, is better than making a 
futile attempt at a long string of words; that the 
thought in a story, if clothed in simple appropriate lan- 
guage, will ensure expression in a reading class truer and 
finer than any word analysis ever invented; that the 
lives of three or four such men as Washington, Jef- 
ferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, absorbed and rightly 
assimilated, afford a better history of America than a^ 
text full of seedy paragraphs and dates; that arithmetic 
should be made habitual, as also the more important 
subject, health; that the use of the toothbrush every day 
is a matter of more importance than diagraming; that 
the several fundamentals of courtesy — a pleasing address, 
reverence toward the aged, consideration for the weak 
and helpless, gallantry toward womanhood, and respect 
for religion — should appear in home and school day 
after day without exception, even as does algebra, Latin, 
and parsing? 

All ideas and ideals of education aim toward conduct. 
How a man behaves determines his place. To have the 
mind of the child rise each day upon its "dead self to 
higher things," is the summum bonum of training. Is 
reason enfeebled? Set it right; then stand close to see 
that no reverses come to it. Is there a sickly will? 
Build it up with watcliful sympathy, love, and sacrifice. 
It takes thought and attention to raise com, cotton, or 
calves; none the less does it take to raise children. A 
dear little girl had performed some task so cheerfully 
and so well that the teacher stooped to smile at her and 
kiss her. With astonishment she saw the child tremble, 
blush, and then break into tears and sobs. ** What is the 



TRAINING 131 

matter, little one?" asked the teacher, anxiously. "Oh," 
said the Httle girl, "it is so strange to me to be treated 
that way. I am never kissed or cared for like that at 
home. Mother gives me nice dresses and 'most every- 
thing, but never gives me hugs and smiles." 

The third maxim added by Dr. James to the preced- 
ing pair is, "Seize the very first possible opportunity 
to act on every resolution you make, and on every emo- 
tional prompting you may experience in the direction of 
the habits you aspire to gain." This is Nature's law 
of positivity. Use is the demand Nature makes of 
every part or whole if identity and progress be preserved. 
**We have as possibilities," says Lancaster, "either balance 
or elaboration or degeneration." "A character," John 
Stuart Mill puts it, "is a completely fashioned will. 
With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved. 
When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to 
evaporate without bearing practical fruit it is worse 
than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder 
future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal 
path of discharge." These are stinging challenges and 
rebukes to much of the work done in school and home. 
The class may think The Village Blacksmith, but often 
it gets no further than mere word calling, mere snapping 
of dry twigs beneath the feet of the intellect. Often a 
fine glow of the emotions is aroused at the rhjrthmic 
truth, 

"Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, 
For the lesson thou hast taught! 
Thus at the flaming forge of life 

Our fortunes must be wrought; 
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
Each burning deed and thought." 



132 GROWING A LIFE 

But this emotional flame finds no deeds to feed it, no 
motor activities to record it forever in the cortex; and 
so the contact of a Longfellow becomes a hollow mem- 
ory, a thing of head, a something of heart, but nothing 
of will. 

Out of such practice grows the educated fool and too 
often, what is worse, the educated hypocrite. The 
school that calls up fine thought and delicate emo- 
tion without giving them form and life in concrete deed 
is v/orking in the same way as the man who plants and 
plows but, just as flower and fruit appear, puts in the 
sickle and prohibits God's final expression, a bountiful 
harvest. The old schoolmaster who said he always 
kept some knotty hickory logs for his boys to chop after 
reading Scott's "Breathes there a man" or Patrick 
Henry's **Give me liberty or give me death," was the 
father of the manual-training movement. For every 
impression there must be an expression; for every set 
of rules of grammar there must be a debating club; for 
every reading of Thanatopsis there must be some use of 
hoe or spade in individual gardens; for every study of 
Julius Caesar there must be a happy, hearty class drama; 
for every chance at Webster, Burke, or Cicero there 
must be an oratorical contest; for every novel read and 
theater attended there must be dishes to wash, essays to 
write, and chores to do until every sentiment finds its 
complement in good honest sweat. 

A few years ago the foremost law^-ers of North America 
met in the city of New York to greet the Chief Justice 
of England. Of these three hundred legal lights of the 
first magnitude, it was asked how many were reared 
on the farm. Two hundred ninety reported themselves 
farmer boys. Here was a percentage which proved 



TRAINING 133 

that success came because of the efficiency of the coun- 
try school? Not at all— but in spite of its deficiencies. 
They had attended the school of God's out of doors, 
where contact mth plow and horse, flocks and herds, had 
developed toil, self-sacrifice, and carefulness until every 
day "inured them to habits of concentrated attention, 
energetic volition, and self-denial." 

These men in their habit-forming period had been so 
drilled by morning help to mother and chores to do for 
father, by woodcraft and hardy self-denial, by the heat 
of summer sun and the cold of winter night, their brains 
were so grooved in effort and attention, that the tedious 
lecture in the law school, the dry dissertations of Black- 
stone or Kent, and the tangle of a bad law case were but 
general forms of discharge to them. Like young Webster, 
fresh from the New Hampshire hills, who for pure pleas- 
ure while reading law memorized the Constitution of 
the United States, so did these men carry the habits of 
the will to that final practical maxim laid down by James: 
"Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gra- 
tuitous exercise every day." They never watched the 
clock. Law, legal knots, hot office days were reckoned 
fun, just pure fun. So "when everj^hing rocks around" 
such men, and their "softer fellow-mortals are winnowed 
Hke chaff in the blast," they stand Hke a granite tower. 
So habit, as a plain phenomenon of the physical world, 
is the chief phenomenon of the mental and ethical life. 
"Habit a second nature!" said the Duke of Wellington. 
"Habit is ten times nature," and Mr. James illustrates by 
recounting that "Riderless cavalry-horses, at many a 
battle, have been seen to come together and go through 
their customxary evolutions at the sound of the bugle-call." 
The law of habit demands that those who have charge of 



134 GROWING A LIFE 

children develop right personal habits between the ages 
of five and twenty or cripple those children for all time. 
Good speech, good manners, neatness and taste in dress, 
cleanliness of person, exercise and health, and all those 
important features which make so much for success 
must be settled before twenty or they will likely trip 
one up and render life awkward and miserable for all 
time. Is the art of conversation as important as the art 
of computing interest? Then teach one as you do the 
other. Is the art of personal address toward men and 
women as important as the law of falling bodies? Then 
in making the curriculum, pay as much respect to good 
manners as you do to physics. 

As the personal traits are settled between five and 
twenty, so the professional tendencies are cast in adamant 
between the years of twenty and thirty. See that man 
yonder? They call him a preacher, but habit held him 
for thirty and two years a farmer, and in dress, manners, 
and thought, habit will keep him a farmer all the rest of 
his life, regardless of the pulpits he occupies. 

The workshop of character is everyday life. This is 
a terrible and glorious truth. Terrible, if our to-days and 
yesterdays are weak and vicious; glorious, if they are 
strong and pure. Under this law a mind irrevocably 
builds for itself each day a heaven or a hell. Every 
thought is a chisel which shapes the image of a satyr or 
an angel. Every deed of love is a rung in habit's ladder 
which lifts us nearer God. By long life of simple, earnest 
faith and self-sacrifice the himian soul mounts so close to 
eternal life that there is no death. Mark the lips of 
Luther as they move for the last time: " Into thy hands 
I commend my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, thou 
faithful God." Who doubts that this personal appeal 



TRAINING 135 

was not occasioned by personal contact? Looking upon 
the chaste and beautiful life of Stonewall Jackson, and 
remembering this law of habit, it is scientific to trust that 
he did, at Chancellors ville, "pass over the river to rest 
'neath the shade of the trees." Moody closed his eyes 
on earth saying, "Light, what rapturous light!'* To 
those who saw him climb through saintly service from earth 
to heaven there comes no doubt that at his Father's knee 
he had opened his eyes, as a waking child, and the vision 
was as rapturous as his words implied. 

Let not those interested in mind growth trust to occa- 
sion. We think that conspicuous events, striking expe- 
riences, exalted moments, have most to do with character 
and capacity. We are wrong. Common days, monot- 
onous hours, wearisome paths, tell the real story. Good 
habits are not made on birthdays nor strong characters at 
New Year. The vision may dawn, the dream may 
unfold, the heart may leap with a new inspiration on 
some mountain top, but the test, the triumph, is at the 
foot of the mountain, on the level plain. Teach the youth 
to trust the imeventful and the commonplace. Bid the 
young soul realize that patient, unremitting toil leaves 
no room for doubt. But as sure as the stars journey in 
their courses, so sure will the day of triumph come to that 
soul which lives the common day in performing old duties 
with new inspiration. 



CHAPTER XII 
APPETITE 

THE movement of mind through the years has been 
toward monism. Through chaos, disorder, ignor- 
ance, man has groped, stvimbled, and pushed his way 
toward oneness. Religion developed its idols, its individ- 
ual penates; here and there appeared a teacher and seer 
for this nation or that race, constructing with converging 
truisms a ten commandments so useful that a people 
siuTounded these heralds vn\h. curtains of smoke and 
fire which veiled them from men and cloaked them with 
God. But Confucius, Baal, Buddha, Brahma, Thor, and 
Moses, all have passed before the light of One who swept 
the creeds and commandments of the human heart into 
a imit, as declared and proved in ** I am the way, the truth, 
and the life. " 

Truth has been hampered, dethroned, imprisoned, and 
under the mask of foolish empiricism been made to ap- 
pear in myriad and contradicting forms. Misconception 
vaunted itself and looked to bigotry and superstition for 
approval. The year 1774 introduced us to Samuel Adams, 
John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, and their experim.ent 
in government. It also introduced Priestley and his 
experiment revealing oxygen, unkno^^^l before, though 
composing one fifth of the air in volume and eight ninths 
of the ocean by weight. Though separated by seas and 
lands, such men were closer than brothers of the flesh. 
One in spirit and aim, to know the truth, they were of that 
select circle that with eye upon simple phenomena, fear- 
ing nothing but ignorance, pushed on over artificiality, 

136 



APPETITE 137 

intolerance, and division to a unified knowledge swayed 
by unified law. 

"A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

If mind be a thing of growth, and all growth requires 
food, then, it may safely be postulated, mind must have 
appetite. So far as we know, there is no voluntary taking 
of food in the normal organic or inorganic spheres where 
there is no desire, no appetite for it. The amoeba in tak- 
ing nourishment as plainly reveals an attitude of change 
which indicates that something important is transpiring 
as does a man w^hen partaking of a good dinner. Over 
the whole organic kingdom stretches this desire, designed 
by Nature to sustain life. According to the law of 
continuity this manifestation of all growth should not 
Stop here. It should involve the mental or spiritual life 
as well as the organic, and every study of psychic phenom- 
ena reveals that this is eminently true. 

A juicy golden orange is no more an appeal to the physi- 
cal appetite of a hungry schoolboy than is a good truth 
to a himgry mind. Thomas A. Edison refuses physical 
food when on the hot trail of a new invention, because he 
is so mentally hungry that his physical appetite is lost. 
The old Greek who found the solution of the problem 
how to tell a real gold crown from a filled one so absorbing 
as to make him forget that he had been taking a bath, and 
started out on a run through the streets, shouting, "Eu- 
reka! Eureka!" is but a larger type of the boys who shout 
from their stomachs 

"Hurrah for the fun! 
Is the puddin' done? 
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!" 



138 GROWING A LIFE 

Natural law has injected so strong and sure a light into 
every phase and form of the taking of physical food that it 
has become the best index to the state of the body. With 
but slight exception the hearty **I am feeling tiptop," 
or the feeble "I am not well to-day," is based upon a 
reHsh or distaste for food. When a rollicking, hearty 
schoolboy becomes quiet for too long a time there is a 
suspicion about the house that something is wrong. 
When he ceases to joke the big sister, or tease the little 
brother, there is a consultation of parents. But when he 
refuses to eat, the verdict " He is ill" is rendered at once. 

Why this same common sense, unfailing diagnosis 
should not be applied to the mental state no one can figure 
out, except a few trainers of children who live in a separate 
world, operated under separate laws, and controlled by 
that infallible reason, "Just because." But that this 
natural and beautifid desire is ignored in mental feeding, 
thousands of schools and homes in this country testify. 

Walk into these schools and what do you find? On 
the first day, a throng of jubilant, expectant youngsters, 
hungry for anything that is appetizing. Fresh from the 
back of the farm horse, from contact with tree, bird, and 
brook, though staggered by stories of the schoolhouses 
being jails, they yet come to enjoy a change. The second 
month reveals depleted ranks, and classes moving with 
the dryness and friction of an ungreased wheel. The end 
of the year discloses a decimated list. Through the 
persuasive "please" of mother and the "must" from 
father a scant third, listless and unresponsive, remain. 
The United States Bureau of Education estimates that 
of the 14,794,403 men over thirty years of age in 1900, 
1,757,023 are without education, did not enter the school- 
room at all; 12,054,335 received only a common-school 



APPETITE 139 

education or part thereof; 657,432 received a high-school 
training, and 325,612 had college training. Here is proof 
in reliable figures that the mental food ser\^ed has been of 
such kind and quality that it has not appealed to the 
mental appetite of young America. 

What can be done to tone, preserve, and restore the 
mind's normal state of hunger ? Precisely the same things 
that are done to tone, preserve, and restore the physical 
appetite. Repeat over and over again, until it becomes a 
clear, convincing truth, *' We get the mind under precisely 
the same laws as we get the body." When we have a 
good appetite, how do we keep it? By understanding in 
the first place that all functions of the body must be 
carefully regulated. It depends upon the quality of the 
air in the room where we sleep. My taste for oatmeal and 
literature depends upon the blood bounding and whirling 
through my body, enlivened by healthful exercise. The 
\dtal, mental, and spiritual forces are known to be so 
closely related that sensible teachers and trainers are 
proclaiming that injury or benefit to one results to all. 
The most recent and the most beneficent reform in popular 
education is the conservation of the child through physical 
training and inspection. And every part of this movement 
rests upon the basis that the physical child is one and the 
same with the mental child. 

Then comes the proper selection of food. House- 
keepers succeed best when through reading, training, or 
native common sense they keep sight of the fact that the 
body needs carbohydrates and proteids. Variety is the 
spice of life, because it is a fundamental demand of appe- 
tite. When one has a dinner of meat, let this proteid 
producer be accompanied by vegetables and fruits rich 
in starch and sugar. If there be a breakfast of bacon and 



I40 GROWING A LIFE 

eggs, do not insult the appetite by having the succeeding 
meal loaded with roast beef and beans. The regions of 
greatest sloth are where meat and bread, cooked in cease- 
less round and unchanging ways, predominate as foods. 

Thus the mental provider who is able to make wise 
and nourishing combinations of the curriculum keeps 
uncloyed the mental appetites of her children. Reading, 
writing, and arithmetic are splendid foods. They are the 
corn bread and roast beef of the educational menu, and 
with proper carbohydrates, such as drawing, drills, music, 
school gardens, history stories, and play, they can be used 
once a day, five times a week, for years, and yet keep 
their tang for the mental tongue. 

But day after day you find teachers and parents who 
serve these studies in rigid routine and ceaseless monotony, 
ignoring the laws of combination, succession, and variety. 
Over and over this one-sided feeding goes on. The 
children send out quiet protests in sighs. Over and over 
the next month the grind of facts, nothing but facts, goes 
madly on, and the dim look in the children's eyes has 
changed to one of resentment. A few more weeks, and 
truancy appears. It would be well if now and then teachers 
and parents would get together and study the situation; 
otherwise the state may lose in educated citizenship. 
Through ignorance, some strange stimulants poisonous 
in their effects are used to restore appetite, but without 
avail. Finally one morning there is an interview between 
the boy and his father. Will meets will, and the father 
learns that, plead or threaten, the fourteen-year-old son v/ill 
have no more of such school life. There is nothing there 
to nourish him, to interest him, or to make him happy. 

One of the rules or suggestions offered his friends by a 
wise octogenarian whereby they might approach his 



APPETITE 141 

years, was, ** Always leave the table hungry." In other 
words, if the liver be overworked, at some inconvenient 
season it will strike back by underworking. After a 
hearty breakfast of pork chops and griddle cakes, the 
indulgent parent will take the young hopeful into the city 
as her shopping companion. The youngster pauses with 
longing looks before the \\'indows where bonbons and 
enticing candies are displayed. The mother at last 
yields, and candy and cakes enough for six are handed 
over to one. Lunch hour arrives, and mother and child 
get something tempting and warm at the Fireside Cafe. 
This is topped off with some fruit, — bananas and a big 
rosv' apple. The afternoon sees peanuts and a sack of 
popcorn provided for the famished hopeful, and when 
home is reached in the evening the mother proceeds to 
prepare supper, an extra fine big supper for her poor 
starved little boy. But that starv^ed boy hunts for a 
spot where he can get his stomach rolled up against his 
knees and head. He wants to be let alone; he does not 
want play, supper, or any other form of expression. He 
is too full for utterance. 

Scene at supper time: Father fresh from his labor, 
famished, faces juicy steak, steaming eggs, and hot rolls 
as a thoroughbred faces the wire in a get-away. Mother, 
expectant, looks around for her boy, and calls him to come 
to supper. From his retreat he grunts he isn't hungry. 
But the anxious parent in mental perturbation brings him 
to the table, saying that he just must eat something; he 
has had nothing all day; he cannot Hve on an empty 
stomach. The steak is refused, the sight of the eggs 
makes him sick, and when a buttered roll is also refused, 
the fond parents are face to face with a catastrophe, and 
"pa" must go for a doctor. 



142 GROWING A LIFE 

This absurd abuse of the stomach is no more common 
than the mental cramming obtaining throughout the 
land. Breakfast of arithmetic and reading at 9 a.m. is 
followed in rapid succession by writing and drawing, and 
a little vapid art criticism as a relish. Then comes a 
sturdy dinner of language washed down with a literary 
veneer. Now, although the child is satiated, the program 
must not be spoiled, and there follows in regular fifteen- 
minute periods history, music, geography, spelling, and 
some necessary instruction in civics and current topics, 
ending with a book-served dish of physiology and hygiene. 
Truly, the little girl had it right when, after a day of this 
sort, she came home, threw herself upon the bed in despair, 
and exclaimed, "Mother, we were given another extra 
to-day." "What was it, my dear?" asked the anxious 
mother. "Oh," said the little victim, getting her phy- 
sical culture and hygiene a bit mixed, "they called it 
physical torture and high jinks." 

The modem curriculum is overloaded. There is so 
much to take in that mastication and insalivation must be 
neglected, and bad cases of mental indigestion follow. 
Spelling lists, reading lessons, everything, gulped down, 
and thought anasmics result. Examinations reveal this 
in ludicrous light. The public press furnishes some prod- 
ucts of school examinations for the people to laugh at. 
Here is a sample from the spelling lists which almost 
any teacher can duplicate: 

"Define these words: 'auriferous, ammonia, eques- 
trian, parasite, ipecac, demagogue, and republican.' " 

One paper said, "Auriferous means an orifice." To 
another, ammonia was a "food of the gods. " Equestrian 
was given as "one who asks questions," while parasite 
was ' ' a kind of umbrella. ' ' Ipecac got mixed with epicure 



APPETITE 143 

and was interpreted as "a man who likes a good dinner. " 
Republican was dismissed by one as "a sinner mentioned 
in the Bible. '* Demagogue closed the list in a way that 
should have repaired any rents in the whole examination 
the definer may have made through mental awkwardness. 
"Demagogue," said he, "is a vessel containing beer and 
other liquids." 

How can this message of alarm as regards the danger 
of an overburdened curriculum and a stultified child 
reach the American home and school — reach them so 
clearly, sharply, and convincingly that it will stiffen their 
spines to rebellion, if need be, for simple yet none the 
less appealing nourishment for the children? There is 
not a school board, superintendent, or supervising power 
in the American schools but knows that educational im- 
possibilities daily are being forced on the grade teachers 
and children. 

There was a great audience facing the Honorable 
Andrew S. Draper, commissioner of education of the State 
of New York, when he arose to speak in the Cleveland 
meeting of the National Education Association in 1908. 
Five thousand representative teachers were thrilled to 
intense quietude when this gray-haired patriarch of 
popular education appeared. Here was one who had 
seen two epochs of American education within the span of 
his own life. They were in part of his creation. Under 
the theme of "Desirable Uniformity and Diversity in 
American Education, " this splendid seer, with the dynamic 
eloquence of a Horace Mann and the cogent reasoning 
of a Locke or a Hegel, flayed his audience to the quick 
for overloading the curriculum, for the teaching of every- 
thing and not much of an3l:hing, and for stripping the 
schools of their most stimulating features — ^individuality 



144 GROWING A LIFE 

in the teacher, and individual teaching — by reducing 
ever3rthing to a lock-step, standardized uniformity. 

He said: "The trouble with the schools, certainly the 
lower schools (and there is trouble with the lower at least) 
is, that they lack aims, unless they are aims which ought 
not to appeal but to a moiety of the people. . . . 
The overwhelming influence of the schools is in the 
direction of a superficial culture, although sustained and 
successftd work is the instrument of all true culture. 

"We each undertake to keep up with all the rest. We 
have each added v/hatever subjects of a culturing cur- 
riculum the people would stand, and brought in all the 
incidental novelties the conventions could suggest. 

' ' We are eternally conforming and standardizing. W hat 
we want is not schools that are alike but diverse as the 
conditions are. Of course all schools must have stand- 
ards, but they must be standards of sense, standards of 
character, standards of information, and not standards 
of uniform courses, or uniform methods for all the schools 
of a state or of the country. 

"... We are a considerate and tolerant people. 
For a score of years good people whose minds seem to 
live in an in_flated atmosphere have pretty nearly monop- 
olized the attention in the schools where young teachers 
are prepared. . . . The effect upon the young girl 
teachers is pathetic. They are not only called upon to 
do more things than they can do, in order to meet the 
demands of the enthusiasts, but they are invoking the aid 
of the occult sciences and feel obliged to accomplish ends 
by constrained methods and devices which are destructive 
of that freedom which is the essence of eft'ectiveness in 
teaching. . . . Out of it the children do not have 
trained into them the ability to do some particular thing. 



APPETITE 145 

The parents are confounded. The school boards have 
become pretty near helpless. The general public is rest- 
less and anxious." 

It was a great pedagogic master who threw our fallacies 
and absurdities upon the canvas before our very eyes. 
Children, tired, bedizened, gorged, sat in schoolrooms 
weighted down with handcuffed programs and idoHzed 
texts. Above it all the artist sketched the executive and 
administrative powers beaming with pride as from their 
lips streamed in roseate glow, "Standardized." Some 
laughed, and vStraightway forgot it; some laughed, and 
straightway went to schoolrooms and lugged in more 
of tasteless texts and rasping routine; a few laughed, and 
returned to their schools mth the red corpuscle enlarged. 
They lived with their children more, brought them the 
best they had, be it a problem, a paragraph, or a flower, 
and with cheer and love shut the door in the face of uni- 
formity and monotony. 

Appetite is maintained and renewed through enjoy- 
ment. Says Dr. Gulick in his Control of Body and Mind: 
"At this moment I think of two different families in 
separate towns, wide apart. Four children, two parents, 
a dog, and a cat make up each family. Each also seems 
to have its own distinct family motto: 'Good Cheer!' for 
one; 'Discontent,' for the other. And meal time is the 
grand parade ground for these mottoes. 

"In the Good-Cheer family cross looks and unkind 
words are positively forbidden, while teasing is voted 
down by imanimous consent. Meal times here are joyful 
occasions w^iich provide good cheer and courage for all. 
If indigestion ever attacks a stomach in this family it 
will have to travel by some other road than that of the 
uncomfortable mind and the sjanpathetic ganglia. 
10 



146 GROWING A LIFE 

" In the family of 'Discontent' the law of practice seems 
to be, 'Tease, quarrel, complain. Get as much as you 
can. Give as little as you must. Be discourteous and 
unamiable whenever you feel like it.' And the law bears 
fruit at meal time and between meals. Parents and 
children alike act as if they had never dreamed of any 
connection between good health and good cheer. For this 
or some other reason both parents have nervous dyspepsia 
already." 

If the reader will insert in these quotations from this 
celebrated physician the word "school" for ''family" 
and also for "meal," and the word "teacher" for "par- 
ents," there will be revealed as accurate a picture of two 
kinds of schools, school teaching, and school teachers as 
can be put into words. Read it, hsten to it, for verily 
the truths physical so readily become the truths mental 
that it indicates in some measure not an analogy between 
the physical and mental but a continuous law. 

"Where is the lesson?" How it came hurtling and 
thundering among us, and woe be unto us if silence too 
long or speech too quick betrayed ignorance on the one 
hand or false memory on the other. " Here, do you mean 
to say that a great big class like this does not know where 
the lesson is? " Smike never trembled before the one eye 
of Squeers more than we trembled before the contracting 
jaw of the teacher who flung that remark into our ranks. 
" Please, sir, " says the good girl, or it may be the giggler, 
"it is at the top of page 97." Now all is well, the chin 
moving downward a sixteenth of an inch, oh, happy 
omen! That good girl or giggler has saved the day, for 
it was just a cue the teacher wanted. He was "there 
to assign lessons, if you please, not to remember them." 
That last was our monopoly. Page 79 would have done 



APPETITE 147 

as well if there had been no misunderstanding; but 
difference of opinion meant that some one had slighted the 
command to record, remember, and reproduce. ** Slighted 
commands in that school would not be tolerated, excused, 
or endured for a moment; not for a second; in fact, not 
for any space of time that could be recorded. " 

But the blunderer was there, Tommy Twaddles; and 
for once he knew just where the lesson was. His little 
hand went up, and every one ** ducked.'* "Well, what 
is it?" roared the teacher. ''She is wrong, please; it is 
page 79." Then the storm broke. "Now is this not a 
pretty predicament! A class not knowing what the 
lesson is! What do I assign lessons for, anyway? Say! 
Just for a lot of thick-heads to forget, of course ! It would 
serve you right if I stood every one of you on this floor 
until you did remember it . " Here the giggler twitched the 
comer of her mouth, but not so furtively that the falcon 
eye of the teacher did not discover it. "And you think 
it funny, do you? Well, I shall just step down and get 
something that will chase those same smiles away!" 
He went, he came, he conquered — ^maybe. What need 
to say more? — save that a big, roseate, inspiring Ken- 
tucky day, 

"When all the earth was crammed full of heaven 
And every bush afire with God," 

was murdered in the v/orshipful hearts of those children. 
It was a joyous day when we met the other kind ! Her 
cheery smile and hearty laughter set the seal of attendance 
upon our wills at once. Her brown hair — ^we used to 
think it was caught up with a dainty ribbon and a pretty 
flower just for us. She was always at the desk, sweets 
voiced and earnest, when the school day began. A happy 



148 GROWING A LIFE 

song, a fresh story, was the invigorating appetizer for the 
coming text. The glow in her cheeks, the light in her 
eyes, as she tilted her cliin like the mocking bird greeting 
a summer's dawn, still Hve in memory — and how we sang! 
It was our best, and she said it v/as good. It did its work; 
it banished despair, worry, fear, and discouragement from 
each little heart. It ushered in love, joy, hope, courage, 
faith, belief in others and belief in ourselves. The games 
she played with us, the pictures she brought us, the books 
she read to us after the hard lessons were met and con- 
quered, come out of the past and lend a sweet aroma to 
the present. 

She could be severe, but always was sympathetic, and 
many a lad laid bare the burden of his soul to her and 
received light when all was dark and comfortless at home. 

No, seen by the light of receding years, she was not 
pretty; she was more — she was beautiful. 

Day after day this radiant creature served *'readin', 
writin', and 'rithrnetic" out of musty, dog-eared text- 
books, but so choice were the selections, so artistic was 
the service, so entrancing the server, our appetites never 
failed us. 



T 



CHAPTER XIII 

TIME 

IME is the stuff life is made of; beware how you use 
^ it. This thought is the substance of an aphorism 
often quoted. Whether this be true or not, we do know 
that the ceaseless flow of years is the most solemn phenom- 
enon of Nature. Time is the invention of man to mark 
the footsteps of God. Along the Mississippi the steamers 
move at night \\Hth certainty and precision, though rocks, 
quicksands, fogs, and shallows abound. Standing by 'the 
pilot's side, you catch the steady gleam of his eye fixed 
unswervingly upon something across the waters; it is the 
beacon light which has been set to mark the channel's 
course. So man along the river of time has set up his 
hours, days, months, years, and centuries to indicate the 
course of history. The time element is conspicuous in all 
operations of the natural worid. The flash of a sunbeam 
and the construction of the hills are alike within the grip 
of seconds. ''Instantaneous" is a meaningless word, 
applicable to nothing unless it would fit a process of 
instruction too often found. "What is nine times five? " 
asked an anxious teacher in one of the finishing schools of 
a big slugger of the multiplication table. The boy hung 
fire "Well, go on," cried the insistent instructor, 
" what are you stopping for ? " "To think, " replied the 
young pliilosopher . "Oh, move along ; we can't take time 
this morning to think; we are behind ten minutes now." 
This miraculous tossing of the inexorable out of the mental 
sphere is a thing worthy of close study. Not only is the 
hand of time reversed in this process, but the clock, with 
the whole works, is pitched summarily into the scrap pile. 

149 



I50 GROWING A LIFE 

John Fiske explains the growth of man to his present 
preeminence over all creation through the extension of the 
program for his infantile education. To this American 
philosopher it is no accident that to man has been given 
a long period ** during which mind is plastic and malleable, " 
and that the length of this period has increased with 
civilization until it covers nearly one third of our 
lives. "It is babyhood that has made man what he is. 
Up through the vertebrate and invertebrate classes 
heredity predetermines ever3rthing. There is no infancy 
for the mollusk, the fish, or the bird. Hence the sphere 
of education with them is extremely limited. . . . The 
educable power of man increases with the lengthening of 
the period of plasticity. As mental life became more 
complex and various, as the things to be learned kept 
multiplying, less and less could be done before birth and 
more and more must be left to be done in the earlier years 
of life. So instead of being bom with a few simple capac- 
ities thoroughly organized, man came at last to be bom 
with the genius of many complex capacities which were 
reserved to be unfolded and enhanced or checked or stifled 
by the incidents of personal experience in each individual. " 

This potent piece of logic supports and elevates the 
thought that if mind or man under natural law breasted 
and struggled with primal antagonisms through countless 
years, in order to wrest a long period of time in which 
consciousness may shape habit, thus liberating conscious 
mind for flight to higher altitudes, then certainly teachers 
and all others interested in education should approach the 
time element with something of awe and reverence. 

The school life of the American child as mapped out 
by educators who are rated as authority comprises about 
eighteen years, — two years of kindergarten, eight years 



TIME 151 

of grammar grades, four years of high school, and four 
years of college or university. The kindergarten has not 
received general support in this country, because the 
American apparently believes that we cannot spare time 
for it. Blossom into college education in a day, fructify 
in knowledge, produce diplomas at once — even though it 
be done with the startlingly incongruous effect of legerde- 
main; as by growing cocoanuts on broomsticks. So the 
few years of kindergarten may be subtracted. 

The grammar school is rated the pet educational institu- 
tion of our country, and few parents are so submerged 
in poverty or ignorance that they do not covet a grammar- 
school education for their children. Beginning with the 
normal child at six, it struggles to keep him for eight years, 
or until he is fourteen. But mark the results! Out of 
every one hundred children of school age in the United 
States only seventy get their names on the rolls. Of 
these seventy only forty-nine attend school regularly. 
Of these forty-nine only fifteen — or less — are enticed, 
cajoled, or encouraged to complete the grammar-school 
course. Eighty-five children lOvSt to the schools between 
the first day of the first grade and the last day of the 
eighth! A school life of three and a half years is all 
that the average American child is getting! Truly, it 
woiild seem that "popular education" is not so popular in 
this "land of the free and the home of the brave*' as would 
appear at first thought ! 1 

Just three and a half years to meet the child in school ! 
To extend this time is, indeed, a work worthy of the best 
minds of the world. Extend it through readjusting the 

'Read article, "Is the Public School a Failure?" in The Ladies* 
Home Journal for August. It will be interesting to know that 
this chapter was written two years before this article appeared. 



152 GROWING A LIFE 

courses of study. Extend it by renovating the musty 
closets of learning. Extend it by pitching out the cob- 
webbed heirlooms of the Dark Ages. Extend it by growing 
better, brainier minds, by letting the sunshine of a strong 
teaching personality flood the dark comers of misdirected 
schoolrooms. Take off the shackling, benumbing thongs 
of lock-step uniformity and let the rich, red blood of child 
life flow in unfettered channels! Extend it, extend life's 
opportunity, by wooing the child heart, as spring showers 
woo the bursting buds; extend it by flooding their lives 
with an environment of joyous sustenance. Children will 
not continue going five or ten years where they find 
nothing they can enjoy. Out with the siftings of musty 
texts and in with the rich, fine soil of adapted subjects! 
Purge the air of om* schoolrooms and homes of unprogres- 
sive thinking, of nagging and dawdling, and surcharge 
them with receptive leadership, enthusiastic faith, and 
systematic, inspiring work! Do these things through the 
cultivation of our own lives, by means of the great 
instruments of imiversal knowledge the state furnishes in 
its public schools, state normals, and universities, and we 
shall increase the school life of the children. We shall 
win them to know that the schoolroom is the happy spot, 
the good-time center, and the place to go when seeking 
the jolliest, pluckiest, brainiest bimch in the community. 
In and through this impression and no other you will add 
several years to their education. 

What are vv^e doing with the Course of Study of the 
public school? This could be well answered in part by 
asking another question. "What have we done with 
it?" We have constructed it out of subjects bequeathed 
to us by past ages. We have joined to those a few 
elements introduced by technical trades. Others have 



TIME IS3 

been brought in by the scientists. The theologian has 
put in one or two more. The culture clubs of the land 
have rounded it up, and the list is nearly complete. 
There is nothing especially bad about this composition. 
It is but the response of environment to that complex 
child nature which is asserting itself. Dr. Dewey's room, 
where a multiplicity of well-selected channels of effort 
awaited the self-activity of the pupil, is Nature's school. 
Have your languages, foreign and domestic; your history, 
ancient, medieval, modem, and mixed; sciences applied 
or misapplied; mathematics practical, impractical, and 
theoretical ; the fine arts or some arts not so fine; the indus- 
trial arts, such as manual training, agriculture, horticul- 
ture, stock feeding, and road building; take them all, and 
you will not outnm the range of mental activity, but you 
would best take care how you. mix them, box them, and feed 
them, or you will outiiin the child's capacity to use them. 
It was a bad day when there flashed on the screen of 
man's mentaHty the ideas contained in such words as 
*' perfected" and "finished." It has furnished the igno- 
ramus, the idler, the sycophant, and the bigot with an 
excuse for setting the stakes and boxing the compass of 
religion, science, and educational processes when some 
self-satisfied character or characters proceeded to drive a 
wedge straight through the normal growth of child life 
by saying that *' eight years shall constitvite the grammar 
school and four years the high school." After this it is 
so easy for all to box the rollicking, growing, irrepressible 
yoimgsters into these ready-made stalls and pitch down 
the food. Palatable or not palatable, soluble or insoluble, 
assimilable or indigestible, it matters not; they have 
eight years, whether needed or not, to perform the acts 
of mastication, insalivation, deglutition, and assimilation. 



154 GROWING A LIFE 

Or, to change the figure, it has permitted us to "play 
school" so easily. Bringing little blocks and piling up 
eight in neat order, every little teacher could claim the 
erection of a grammar school; four more laid on these 
made the complete public-school system. 

We are face to face with our folly. It is plain to think- 
ing men and women that the classification of foods for the 
mind should never have been mistaken for mental capacity 
or growth; that growth or content 0} life is continuous ^ and 
there is no more possibility of building a stream of thought 
out of classified knowledge, without the blending force of a 
self -active mental selection, than there is of constructing 
a flowing stream by setting barrels of water side by side. 

Efforts have been made to correct this. Thinking it 
a trouble of time scale, the grammar school was shortened 
to seven years and the high school lengthened to five. 
The hallowed twelve-year curriculum must be worshiped, 
no matter the angle of approach. This did not work, so 
some proceeded to try another combination of days : nine 
years of grammar school and three years of high school. 
But still, to the amazement of the experimenters, the 
plodders and pushers, the creepers and flyers were penned 
together as before. The National Education Association 
was set to work on this question of time, and the report 
of the committee known as the Committee on Six-year 
Course of Study was brought forth in 1908. The sub- 
stance of this investigation is thus stated: 

**It is painfully evident that the United States is the 
o]ily considerable civilized nation that prolongs its system 
of elementary schools to eight or nine years. 

"Since 1900 France and Japan have reversed their 
national programs, and both have limited the term of 
elementary study to six years. 



TIME IS5 

"In 1907 a committee on Six-year Courses of High 
School Study reported the trend of competent opinion is 
strongly toward such a di\asion. 

"i. It would give better instructors and better 
instruction. 

"2. It would offer variety in personality because of 
departmental plan. 

"3. It would give better science equipment earlier. 

"4. Manual training would be submitted earlier and 
better. 

"5. Modem languages could be begun earlier and 
continued longer. 

**6. It would soften the present abruptness of passing 
up. 

"7. It would cause more pupils to enter ninth grade. 

"8. Six-year courses would unite subject, pupil, and 
environment better, as proved in Germany and England. 

''9. It would give more time for preparation for 
college. 

"10. It would aid in solving the problem of broadening 
and crowding the curriculum. 

" In 1908 J, Edward Swanstrom of the Board of Educa- 
tion of Greater New York declared for a six-year elemen- 
tary course, followed by three years in the lower high 
school plus three years in the upper grades or specialized 
high schools. This plan would be highly economical for 
Greater New York. At least ten cities in the United 
States for several years have used the six-year division. 

"Your present committee offers an outline of require- 
ments for pupils at the end of the sixth year on this plan : 
It suggests for seventh and eighth grades a course of study 
based on the experience and practice of the civilized world, 
to consume seventy per cent of the pupil's time, and 



156 GROWING A LIFE 

advises the other thirty per cent be given to electives; 
it recommends fixing points for vocational influences to 
enter into the pupil's life in accord with local conditions 
and individual characteristics. It recommends that pro- 
motions be made by units of work rather than by years, 
thereby shortening or lengthening the time in which the 
course may be completed by pupils of varying ability. " 

Focus all this into one declaration, and we have in 
very truth a process of economy in time identical with 
that launched at the outset of this discussion. For in 
substance this is what the report advises: Use your 
courses of instruction to feed and to classify but not to 
impede. Rate the pupils' growth by evident powers and 
possibilities rather than by days and texts. Use as 
much reasonable and flexible "red tape" as you need, 
but in the name of Pro\'idence do not tangle it with the 
burning desires, the fond hopes, and splendid capacities 
of the normal mind. The pedagogy of the twentieth 
centiuy demands that the eye be taken off the clock 
and fastened on the child. Mete out promotions for 
"deeds, not years; for heart throbs, not seconds meas- 
ured upon a dial." 

The chief enemy to the flexible, natural course of study 
is the "perfected" or "finished" instructor. Such an in- 
structor having gone through a "regular" high-school or 
grammar-school course, believes that a sufficient reason 
why all children of the earth should take the same sanc- 
tified path or be forever lost. One of these, a graduate 
from a great university, came into a high school where 
the pupils could finish the course in three years or ten 
according to their abilities and at once this teacher so far 
forgot her sense of honor as to make disloyal and disre- 
spectful remarks about the coiu-se of study, intimating 



TIME 157 

that it was weak and shoddy. She passed over the fact 
that all the leading universities of the Middle West 
accredited that course of study, but because it was not 
like her high-school course, cribbed into four years, she 
ignored it. "Why do you not have solid geometry in 
your course?" she asked the principal. "We have always 
had it, madam, and are having it every day." "Why, 
I did not know that," she exclaimed; and the extent of 
her reasoning or discernment was revealed. 

Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, in her plea before the Boston 
National Education Association of 1903 for receptivity 
among teachers as to economy of time, pointed to an 
eighth-grade girl, especially able in arithmetic, entering 
a high-school algebra class. She found the class had 
finished the fundamentals of factoring, the greatest com- 
mon divisor, the least common multiple, and algebraic 
fractions. To the wonder and pleasure of the teacher, 
the girl accomplished this work in three days. Yet, to 
the shame of that same teacher be it known, this prodigy 
in mathematics was kept loitering in algebra for the 
regular periods required for college affiliation. 

The "old-field school," with its backless benches and 
its course of study abbreviated, as Bob Taylor tells 
us, to "one Webster's blue-backed elementary spelling 
book, one stone bruise, one sore toe, and Peter Parley's 
travels," knew better than that. There were boys in it 
that laid aside the spelling book at twelve and stepped 
into the dazzling glories of the "dictionary." Geography 
was mastered by a certain kind of boy at ten, and that 
boy knew accurately more things about this earth at that 
age than most eighth-grade graduates who now mark 
time in this study through the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, 
and a part of the eighth years. 



iSS GROWING A LIFE 

The eye kindles, the heart throbs with boyish fervor, 
as in memory a trip is made up the aisle to the teacher 
to tell him that all those problems assigned have been 
conquered. But dearer than conquest was the low- 
toned reward he offered. "Go right on, my boy, if you 
have more time; and remember, that for every page 
you forge ahead, you will receive just and ample reward." 
Caesar never found fairer realms for conquest beyond 
the Alps than the boys and girls of the old, gradeless 
school discovered in such statements as that. How the 
master's reading in the open our stages of progress beyond 
the "prescribed lesson" whetted to the sword's edge a 
contest with a freckle-faced son of a blacksmith. The 
other day in Minneapolis, in the great Conservation 
Congress, that boy, now a man with a copious sprinkle 
of gray in his hair, sat among the dignitaries as repre- 
sentative from Kentucky. He might smile should he 
read this, but there is no doubt he sat there because he 
learned to love power by fighting with another black- 
smith's son over leadership in arithmetic, reading, and 
"speakin' pieces" in a school where a teacher ruled who 
knew how to regulate life. 

See that time saver yonder? She has begun her work 
to-day with a central idea. Everything must bend and 
move to the need of the child. The Course of Study 
marked out for children is a pathway upon which they 
can move to success with least waste. The supervising 
powers have given her much of text from which to select. 
How carefully she winnows the grain from the husks! 
Life is too dear to crop on sagebrush, mesquite, and 
thorns of the "page-to-page lesson" and the parched 
stubble of the "yes and no" question. She leads her 
division of the elect in pastures green, where under skillful 



TIME 159 

plan every step reveals an alluring bower of thought 
and every thought looks out upon the dimpling waters 
of joyous emotions. Every recitation is a tournament 
where knights gallant as those of the the Round Table 
ride to contest. 

The fight rages furiously. Javelins of geography or 
battle axes of arithmetic fly through the air, and woe 
unto the insecure visor of the guesser, the ill-adjusted 
armor of the sluggard, and the thin shield of the inat- 
tentive! The air tingles with silent huzzas for the brave 
and valiant, be he vanquished or victor. He has done 
his best, and better than that no man can do. 

But down the field come the workers in the last test 
against that barbed line of opposing thought. Quick, 
or the victory is delayed another lesson! Eager minds 
sway eager bodies — swift as eagles they move; but the 
clang of the gong announces the close of the contest. 
Instantly a forest of hands goes up, a chorus of eager 
appeals arises: ''Please, teacher, let us have but a minute 
more, and we will get this problem." The queen is 
gracious, and with the wave of her hand they are at it 
again, and in a moment it is done. The victory is com- 
plete. Here they come trooping by to their seats. They 
dip the pennants of their hearts — fluttering, happy 
smiles — before their teacher-queen, and she crowns each 
worker and each winner with an approving glance. 

There you have the solution of the time problem, no 
matter whether it be touching a school lesson, a school 
love, or a school life. 

Did you ever see a room of pupils smothered and 
stunted by the professional dawdler? I once made a 
trip to a little village in which I was deeply interested. 
The genial sky and inviting fields lured me one fine 



i6o GROWING A LIFE 

morning into paths leading away from the \nllage center. 
Looking about me, I noticed that a well-defined avenue 
through the dog fennel, touched here and there by an 
open space of blue grass, was blocked in the distance by 
the white cupola of the town schoolhouse. Here then 
was the Harvard of this community. This was the 
opportunity house for the children of a rich agri- 
cultural center. Turning down that way, I was soon 
upon the threshold. 

"The jackknife's carved initial" was there festooned 
with pencilings of chalk and lead. With the autocratic 
courtesy of the cult, I lifted the latch of the door from 
which the greater commotion issued, and smilingly 
entered. My pride took a tumble. No obsequious usher 
rushed forward to offer a prominent seat. Not even the 
teacher appeared. A few pupils near the door stopped 
the anything but gentle flow of animated conversation 
for a moment to look up, but beyond that I did not 
cause a ripple upon the varied stream of life about me. 

The scene that met my gaze was a striking one. By 
the stove sat a group of boys and girls of older years 
chatting, each one keeping accompaniment to the general 
conversation with the chewing of a bit of wax. Down 
a little farther a Jeffries-Fitzsimmons struggle was on, 
accompanied by all the proper jargon. Two of the 
oldest girls in the room were an-anging their hair with 
the aid of a pocket mirror, small, yet large enough to 
reveal the charms of rosy cheeks and starry eyes. Audac- 
ity seasoned with chagrin had routed dignity, and I 
resolved to explore this pandemonium to the end. 

**Is this recess?'* I asked a fine lass with her hair in 
pigtails. With a roguish twinkle she replied, " La, no, sir, 
this goes on all the time." "Where is the teacher?" 



TIME i6i 

**She is over there," nodding her head toward a corner 
of the room, somewhat obscured by some long and high 
benches that stretched between. Through the crush of 
Hfe about me I pushed my way until I came full upon a 
group of boys sitting upon a long bench. They appeared 
neither "cabined, cribbed, nor confined." "Whose ques- 
tion next?" asked one, "Mine," said a strapping fellow. 
"No," said a little round boy by his side, with a smirk, 
"it is mine, and I must hurry to get the answer ready or 
she will get me." 

"Hurry" was easy for that bunch; for with swift 
glance into hidden books and with good connections, 
each made good on his numbered question. "What is 
this class doing, my son?" I asked of the boy nearest me. 
"Oh, nothing much," was the cheery answer; and the 
whole row acquiesced in a giggle. I looked over at the 
teacher, who was so busy hunting for questions inside a 
book that she had scarcely discovered my presence, and 
she seemed, by garb, posture, face, plan, and purpose to 
echo — ' ' Nothing much . * ' 

Was it said that eighty-five children are lost to the 
schools between the first day of the first grade and the 
last day of the eighth grade? Then they can be found 
on the road that stretches between this pedagogic dead- 
beat and that princess of pedagogy who lives twenty- 
four hours of every day. This sort of logic may not 
please the man or woman who for personal reasons (very 
personal reasons) demands "facts and figures, sir, instead 
of high-sounding phrases and glittering generalities." 

Bah! Bring a red-blooded, whizzing, burning axiom of 
pedagogy into the midst of American teachers and some 
"professah" will put up his nose glasses, put his blood- 
less finger as near it as he dares, and in Murdstone tones 
11 



1 62 GROWING A LIFE 

remark, "Now, let us be stire about this; where does the 
philosophy of the matter lie?" The homes and schools 
of this good earth have had too much of your philosophy 
already, you schoolroom iceberg! Your reasoning in 
its golden age reached the acme of its dynamics in the 
conclusion, "I think; therefore I am." Poor old, inert 
scholarship! The American schoolboy knows better 
than that now. Your pallid lips and palsied limbs are 
reflections of the medieval light and life that failed. 
When the earth of necessity swung sunward into a new 
day, your simimary of living went out with the mists of 
medieval night, and there flashed forth the truth born 
of Hfe's real philosophy, the philosophy of service, "I 
do; therefore I am." What the school calendar needs is 
life, and to have it more abundantly. 



CHAPTER XIV 
FREEDOM 

DO you like to grow flowers? Whisper the answer 
low; because if it be **no" we must hide it, or some 
one will be in disgrace. Flowers are God's thoughts in 
bloom. Talk about responsive friends! Never could 
there be anything more responsive than a bed of petu- 
nias, or a border of chrysanthemimis. With hoe in 
hand we talk to and caress them, and with fluted leaf, 
silky tendril, and nodding grace they speak their grati- 
tude and love. You bend above them with your brain 
afire with ambitious schemes, and with cool green leaf and 
tender bud they woo away consuming passions. Growth, 
graceful mold, and airy motion would seem enough from 
plants to tell to grower their tales of love. But one fine 
sunrise the flower lover finds Mother Nature has sent him 
numberless love lyrics, with the chrysanthemum or 
morning-glory done in original colors across the front. 
A man or woman who will live through a spring or sum- 
mer without growing a plant should be sent to his or 
her natural habitat, — a jail with a concrete floor. 

There are two gigantic caladiums swinging their pen- 
dant ears of green above a spacious lawn. Each leaf 
by outshining and overgrowing its elder brother pro- 
claims that caladiums believe "time's noblest offspring 
is its last." The lady of the garden inspects them with 
fondest pride. That last great leaf is phenomenal. 
How can so large a thing be borne upon so slender a 
support? There must be no risk — that leaf must be pre- 
served, even though Nature be corrected and improved. 

163 



1 64 GROWING A LIFE 

She searches for an idea, and who ever knew woman- 
kind to search in vain? A forked branch is cut and 
thrust into the moist earth until the fork lies beneath 
the slender, pliant petiole of the great leaf; over into the 
pronged support is lifted this beautiful but unfinished 
product of Nature, while a triumphant smile illumines 
the lady's face. The leaf has nothing to do but lie in 
the protecting groove and thrive. But 

"The best laid plans of mice and men 
Gang aft aglee," 

because there are other forces in this good world besides 
those particular mice and men. Later My Lady of the 
Garden stood beside her casement and watched the 
clouds scud before an approaching storm. Sheets of dust 
swirled and eddied to tell of wild companionship with the 
wind. Now if the v/ind had known of the stanch protec- 
tion given the great leaf by the kind lady it might not have 
swept over meadow and trees right across her fine lawn 
where grew the caladiums. But on it came, whirring and 
hurtling into the very midst of the huge leaves. How 
they swung and danced, cur\^ed and flexed, and seemed to 
shout in laughter to the storm, **0n with your swift 
currents ; otir Mother has given us curved keels and ribs of 
tissued torsion with which to ride your rolling billows." 
But horrors! There is one with stem reefed against a 
stick. It bows, it bends, but the avenues of freedom have 
been choked by a false support. Around goes the big 
green leaf, but the groove does its work, holds it tight, and 
"pop" goes the stem. The tryst of an hour before has 
turned into a tragedy, and the beloved leaf lies bleeding 
and broken before the eyes of its would-be protector, 
while its kindred, riding in the embrace of Nature, move 
on to safety and to jo}^ 



FREEDOM 1 6s 

The curse of groove rests upon education. The dry- 
bones of the Dark Ages — conformity, ritualism, caste, and 
barbarous ideals — continue to be the props upon which we 
rest too much of the superstructure of our children's 
training. In his essay on ''Education" Herbert Spencer 
a few decades ago hurled at the head of our systems of 
learning a burning brand which has not yet ceased to 
arouse and illuminate two hemispheres. 

Said he: . "The remark is trite that in his shop or in 
his office, in managing his estate or his family, or in play- 
ing his part as a director of a bank or a railway, the college 
graduate is little aided by his knowledge he took so many 
years to acquire — so little, that generally the greater part 
of it drops out of his memory. 

"If we inquire what the real reason is for giving boys 
a classical education, we find it to be simply conformity 
to public opinion. Men dress their children's minds, as 
they do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. 

"A boy's drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted on, not 
because of their intrinsic value but that he may not be 
disgraced by being found ignorant of them, that he may 
have the education of a gentleman, the badge marking a 
certain social position, and command a consequent respect. 

"To get above some and be reverenced by them and 
to propitiate those who are above us, is the universal 
struggle in which the chief energies of life are expended. 

"Not what knowledge is of most real worth is the 
consideration, but what will bring most applause, honor, 
respect, what will most conduce to social position and 
influence, what will be the most imposing. As throughout 
life not what we are but how we shall be thought of is the 
question, so in education the question is not the intrinsic 
value of knowledge so much as its extrinsic effects on 



t66 GROWING A LIFE 

others. And this being our dominant idea, direct utility 
is scarcely more regarded than by the barbarian when 
filing his teeth and staining his nails. 

**But we that have span-long Uves must ever bear in 
mind our limited time for acquisition. And remembering 
how narrowly this time is limited, not only by the short- 
ness of life but also still more by the business of life, we 
ought to be especially solicitous to employ what time we 
have to the greatest advantage. 

"Before devoting years to some subject which fancy or 
fashion suggests, it is surely wise to weigh vidth great care 
the worth of the results which the years might bring if 
otherwise applied. " 

Such appeals have not been without effect. Spencer, 
Ruskin, Emerson, and Dickens have through logic and 
laughter, essay and novel, touched the palsied body of 
nineteenth-century education into a new freedom. When 
Charles Dickens died half of mankind — its women — had 
little if any access to popular education. The curricula 
of all schools were dominated entirely by the classics. 
There was not a science laboratory in existence; manual 
training had not appeared in England or in the United 
States ; industrial and technical schools, save in the weak- 
est forms, had not arisen; the Smikes and Joes of the entire 
earth were still bruised and crushed on the wheel of sordid 
and narrow conceptions of education and brotherhood; 
the bleak, bare walls of such madhouses as cast terrible 
shadows over the lives of Charles Lamb and his dear 
sister were still the types of mercy to the imbalanced 
minds ; at looms, in mines, in shops dark, dirty, and reeking 
with disease, children, haggard, starved, and oppressed, 
were robbed of their birthright, and nowhere appeared 
remedial legislation. Education was still in the hands of 



FREEDOM 167 

the unfeeling, awkward squad, there being but few 
training schools for teachers in existence. Learning was 
a badge of differentiation, separating its possessor from 
the "common herd" and testifying to the world that he 
who had achieved it was immune from work. 

"Kjiow the truth and the truth shall make you free, " 
said the Master Teacher. Truth has done much to relieve 
the hampered and oppressed mind during the last few 
decades, but there is still more freedom needed. The 
college and the university have done a good work. They 
have been altars of educational zeal, where devotees of 
learning have lighted their torches to turn again and push 
into the reluctantly yielding darkness of superstition and 
ignorance to save their brother, man. But the higher 
institutions are opening their windows more and more 
to currents of common opinion. There may be still in 
these institutions some self-centered intolerance and 
license, but no one knows this better than the universities 
and colleges themselves, and they have set their faces 
toward the problem of eradicating these evils. 

The collegiate world in the main has been greatly 
helped in the last two decades by cotirting criticism. 
What the other, the outside fellow, thinks is a question no 
longer without weight to higher education, but one to 
which it constantly seeks an answer. Just the other day 
a gentleman of Chicago, of an inquisitive turn of mind and 
a few millions, decided to revolve his curiosity about the 
question, "Why a college or university?" He set up a 
great bureau with all the proper knobs, drawers, rollers, 
and mirrors which could please the fastidious taste of 
any one wishing to display his charms before such a piece 
of furniture. He called upon all the college presidents in 
America to bring forward all the facts and figures they had 



i68 GROWING A LIFE 

on the subject. He hunted up the college graduates, 
and some he shook loose from teaching, some from law, 
some from renown, and some from cigarettes long enough 
for them to tell him how and where and when the college 
or the university had aided them. Figures were cast up, 
experts were summoned, everything was checked, and at 
last the report was ready. Mr. Crane, for that was the 
name of the inquisitive gentleman, stepped forward and 
said: "So far as we are able to ascertain, after great 
expense of time and money, there is no reason for the 
existence of the American college or university. " 

Did this throw the institutions of higher learning into 
a frenzy? It was deHghtful to see the college men laugh, 
shake hands with Mr. Crane, congratulate him on his 
discovery, and then turn round, take some of the gentle- 
man's own figures, add a few of their own, and, twisting 
them into a keen, graceful lash, proceed to give Mr. Crane 
a chance to dance. Resistance is the avenue adown 
which Nature leads all things to freedom. Challenge 
falsehood, and it kneels at your feet; run from it, and it 
looms large as your master. Protestantism had its birth 
in Luther's answer to the friends who urged him to fly 
from persecution: "To Wonns shall I go. Though 
every tile upon the housetops be a devil, yet will I go." 
The colleges and universities of this country have nothing 
to fear from anything save truth. 

Recently the cause of higher education in the land was 
greatly helped when a man whose words reach the ears of 
a million readers proclaimed: "The college gives honors 
where there is no merit; position without character; 
rewards the unworthy ; inflates the foolish ; makes mention 
of the mediocre and advertises nullity. All schools where 
young men and women are taught to work with their hands 



FREEDOM 169 

as well as their heads, and where self-reliance and useful- 
ness are given a first place in the curriculum, are good and 
worthy." 

The modem educator ceases to call such remarks 
vaporings of the vicious, panderings to the contadtni, or 
the maudlin mutterings of the envious ; but he uses them 
as Lincoln did the rat hole in his ofhce, as "a thing worth 
looking into." Higher education and the whole system 
of public education realizes that satisfaction breeds rust, 
and that a healthful discontent is the first symptom of 
success. Education in America has slipped its cable from 
the buoy of intolerance and has set its prow toward the 
seas of scientific service. 

It is adapting its demands to the needs of men. 
Read the report of the College Entrance Require- 
ment Committee at the last National Education 
Association. 
It is regarding the human hand and heart as well as 
head. 

Read O. J. Keni's book on the training in Illinois 
country schools. 
It is getting more into life and less into books. 
Read the report of playground and fresh-air move- 
ments in the public schools of progressive centers. 
It is learning that education is an attitude and not an 
examination. 

Read three most recent works on pedagogy. 
It is meeting the only test of merit, — service to all. 
Read the report as to the new attitude of Cincin- 
nati University. 
It is learning that its chief legacy was mentioned when 
the Master Mind said, "The poor always j^e have 
with you. " 



I70 GROWING A LIFE 

Read report of ** community center" work by the 
public schools of New York and Chicago. 
It is learning that it must produce men, high-minded 
men, or die. 

Read the annual addresses of President Garfield of 
Williams, President Hadley of Yale, and President 
Lowell of Harvard in the summer of 191 1. 
An educational system, like a Chinese house, is con- 
structed from the top downward. The forces of freedom 
working in the higher institutions of learning are reaching 
down to the high school and to the elementary school. In 
fact, the red blood of thinkers like Harris, Eliot, and 
Parker has found in the broad, full organs of democracy — 
the public schools — such room for expansion and such 
choice nourishment that a reaction has resulted which has 
enriched the whole system as never before in the history 
of education. 

The public-school forces of many states of this republic 
have in the last twenty years stripped their universities 
and colleges of the trappings of medievalism and pushed 
them into the race of progress. The public school close to 
the people has won the people's confidence, and in turn 
there seems to be a contest between the states as to which 
can quickest and best enrich and develop its common- 
school system. To secure uniformity, adaptation, and 
power the people are granting public educational depart- 
ments some remarkable prerogatives. Colorado, Iowa, 
and Oklahoma have each placed in charge of the 
department of public education all education in the 
state, save a few unimportant items. In the last year 
Oklahoma placed in the hands of a Board of Education 
her entire interests in public education, embracing the 
common schools, elementary institutions, normal schools, 



FREEDOM 171 

and all others, except the agricultural and medical college 
and subsidiary branches of a technical nature, together 
with her university and attendant preparatory schools. 
Such a thing is probably unparalleled in the annals of 
popular education in America. 

Among the many results of this triumphant era of the 
public school is one that seems more important than all 
others because more just, and that is, the greater freedom 
given to and taken by the public-school teacher. There 
is no atmosphere of repression, regret, or remorse about 
the places where the public-school teachers gather. It 
means much to be a teacher now, and the very rank and 
file are acting in that belief. They are developing that 
righteous egoism which once belonged only to the great 
teachers. "The state must educate, " said Horace Mann, 
in tone and manner that indicated he knew more than all 
the sneering politicians of America, and he did. F. W. 
Parker, in his talks to teachers on teaching, inserted no 
"Excuse me for being personal, "or "If I may," but 
spoke as one having authority, and he did. Savonarola 
and Socrates preached the divinit}'' of personality as did 
that great teacher who said, "All authority is given me 
in heaven and in earth." There is no apology for one's 
existence or work in that sort of statement; it is such a 
radiant spirit of self-respect and self-reliance that is com- 
ing to dominate the schoolrooms of this country. 

Stand a free soul in the obscurest comer of earth, and 
tyranny will some day vibrate to its influence. It is 
said that every guard chained to Saint Paul in the dark 
prisons of Rome went away a Christian. Place the free, 
unbiased, receptive man or woman in the place where 
children dwell, and self-reliant, normal characters will 
issue therefrom. In this is a solution for the murky and 



172 GROWING A LIFE 

vitiating condition confronting high schools and grammar 
schools, with their overloaded curricula, their monotonous 
grind, their colorless mental food, and their decadent 
public sentiment. Let the school boards employ a man 
or a woman who is worth while, who trusts himself or 
herself, and all problems will be solved. 

What is a curriculimi to a teacher who knows, is, and 
can do? It is a thing to take up and lay down, to make 
or break at will! "But that destroys system!" The 
disciples of Gradgrind should understand that the destruc- 
tion of such monotonous systems is what the tired brains 
and listless hands of the children are beseeching. 

If this teacher of personality to-day leaves out a study, 
vshe inserts two portions of self, and thereby becomes one 
of Lincoln's philanthropists, in making two good things 
where was only one before. If you find her at the 
arithmetic period doing the most splendid language work, 
she insists it is such a delightful surprise to the children 
to gather pretty language plums off the old arithmetic 
tree. If you catch her afire with a story, she will blush in 
modesty and say: "I saw such splendid color work done 
the other day by a little girl who has too little faith in her 
own efforts. So I was telling this story of Millet to 
increase her confidence in herself. I am always thinking 
of my pupils as little men and women. That freckle-faced 
boy over there is my lawyer, that curly-haired one is my 
farmer — he leads in school gardens — while that one is my 
Ty Cobb, for he is a wonderful "fielder. " 

The daily program to this worker is just so many oppor- 
tunities to feed the natural desires of the children, instead 
of merely a certain niunber of texts. Each subject is a 
food which must be classified and must be prepared with 
skill so that in this form it may be appetizing to some, 



FREEDOM 173 

in that form to others, wliile to many it must not be 
offered at all. Each pupil is an individual with special 
tastes, desires, and possibihties. There is no stuffing, 
cramming, or repressing here, in spite of educational 
fashions, examination demands, and college requirements. 
On the inside of her pedagogic heart this worker always 
reserves room for wholesome laughter at the ridiculous. 
Nothing excites her risibilities more than to contemplate 
certain makers of courses of study and association auto- 
crats rushing down before the footlights, shouting that all 
schools must toe a common mark. "Away with local 
situations, aptitude or inaptitude ! The grind is good and 
must go on! Throw in the fanner boy and the city boy, 
the imaginative and the unimaginative, the normal and 
the defective ! Pitch them into the great uniformity hopper 
and grind them out into passing Latins or historians, or 
let them take the way of the worthless and bring up at the 
trash bin. *' With what merriment she recites the charm- 
ing allegory put forth by Professor Dolbear of Tufts 
College in mocking tribute to just such policies of training. 
*'In antedilmdan times, while the creatures of the 
animal kingdom were being differentiated into swimmers, 
climbers, nmners, and flyers, there was a school started 
for their development. Its theory was that the best 
animals should be able to do one thing as well as another. 
If an animal had short legs and good wings, attention 
should be directed to running, so as to even up the qualities 
as far as possible. So the duck was kept waddling instead 
of swimming and the pelican was kept wagging his short 
wings in the attempt to fly; the eagle was made to run and 
allowed to fly only for recreation, while maturing tadpoles 
were unmercifully guyed for not being one thing or another. 
"The animals that would not submit to such training, 



174 GROWING A LIFE 

but persisted in developing the best gifts they had, were 
dishonored and humiliated in many ways. They were 
stigmatized as being narrow-minded specialists. 

"No one was allowed to be graduated from the school 
unless he could climb, swim, run, and fly at certain pre- 
scribed rates ; so it happened that the time wasted by the 
duck in the attempt to run had so hindered him from 
swimming that his swimming muscles had atrophied and 
he was hardly able to swim at all ; and in addition to that, 
he had been scolded, punished, and ill-treated in so many 
ways as to make life a burden. In fact, he left school 
humiliated. The eagle could make no headway in climb- 
ing to the top of the tree; and although he showed he could 
get there just the same, the performance was counted a 
demerit since it had not been done according to the 
prescribed course of study. 

"An abnormal eel with large pectoral fins proved he 
covild run, swim, climb trees, and fly a little. He attained 
an average of sixty per cent in all studies. He was made 
valedictorian of his class. ' ' 

In making observation of the schools that are really 
worth while, where liberty under law reigns and the prod- 
uct turned out is competent, wholesome character, you 
will find that these principles obtain : 

Strict reverence for the personality of the child. 
Absolute adherence to the faith that the physical 

basis is the best mental basis. 
Attaching more significance to hitting a nail, hanging 
a picture, or delivering the goods than to giving 
the rule of Quintilian, naming the Pimic wars, or 
working cube root. 
Demanding that pupils be given ideas, not texts and 
programs. 



FREEDOM 175 

Indexing the months by happiness instead of studies 

completed or depleted. 
Giving ninety-nine per cent inspiration and one per 
cent discipline instead of one per cent inspiration 
and ninety-nine per cent discipline. 
Treating every schoolroom or class as if it were a 

repubUc of free souls. 
Realizing that all just governments derive their 

authority from the consent of the governed. 
Decapitating, as it were, the first party in a leader's 

place caught watching the clock. 
Presenting teachers with a merry laugh, a beautiful 
face, charming dress, and with personality plus. 
Not only coveting criticism and comparison but 

going out and compelHng them to come in. 
Advertising; making the school a community center 
and keeping in direct touch with the newspapers— 
the best signs of a live work. 
In each of these principles is found the law of free and 
continuous growth. Education is not in the schoolroom 
but everywhere— not a mechanical process but a beautiful 
unfolding under the sway of Nature within and the 
genius of the master hand without; moving not toward 
the scrap heaps of grades and graduation but toward the 
image of the just made perfect, strong, accomplished, and 
beautiful in body, intelligent and responsive in mind, 
reverent in spirit, and at last a just and useful citizen, 
because, under freedom, efficient. 



CHAPTER XV 
POWERS 

MIND as a natural phenomenon has been discovered 
to be a force, — a force of growth and a conscious 
growing thing. Its growth iinder natural law is self- 
active, right, and joyous. The conditions under which 
this life flourishes best have been found as those com- 
mon to all organic life properiy fed, stimvilated, and 
trained. These conditions in every realm of growth de- 
mand that feeding be attended by appetite, stimulation 
by time, and direction by freedom. Continuity per- 
mits no exception as mind is approached, but seemingly 
becomes more and more insistent that these conditions 
be met. Mind has been identified, classified, and con- 
ditioned in the plain terms of the world at our doors. 
"Let us with ear of faith," borrowing the thought of 
Wordsworth, "keep the shell of the Universe to our own 
ear'/ until its sonorous cadences teach us the mysterious 
blending of matter, mind, and spirit. 

Have you observed that great powers have their own 
idiosjmcrasies of expression? Tricks of the trade, they 
might be called. Michaelangelo called upon a friend 
and, finding him out, left his card, a circle upon the door. 
"Michaelangelo has been here," said his friend upon 
returning, "for no man but him in Rome can draw a 
circle like that." Craftsmen of the violin know the 
model of Stradivarius. The curve of Cremona has filled 
the earth with his spirit. "Is it a Steinway, a Tiffany, or 
an Oliver Chilled?" is but to ask for the stamp of 
individuality. 

176 



POWERS 177 

Nature also has little oddities o£ her own. In truth, 
these children gathered their habits from her, their 
mother. Nature is trichotomous. From shaping the 
trifold or trefoil clover leaf to fashioning a planet, she 
shows a love for the figure three. There is the seed, 
radicle, and plumule; root, trunk, fruit; land, water, 
atmosphere; heredity, life, environment; father, mother, 
child- body, mind, soul; Father, Son, and Spint. 

The attributes of mind observe this empmcism. In 
classifying the powers of the mind, logical psychologists 
and metaphysicians illogical have found three-the 
intellect, the emotions, and the will. A boy looks upon 
a tree laden with fruit. Perception is at work.^ There 
is a struggle going on within that interested brain. Are 
they apples or pears? Representative powers of the 
intellect call up mental images of pears heretofore seen; 
comparison in color, size, and shape is made, and decision 
is reached. They are pears. Here through the senso- 
rium, the intellect chiefly has been active. Now mem- 
ories come of joy experienced in eating pears. Tne boy s 
eyes sparkle, his mouth waters, the muscles become 
tense. Emotion now occupies the center of the mental 
sta^e. The more he looks the more he desires. But 
seeing and wanting avail him nothing, he discovers. He 
moves, he vaults the fence, he scales the tree, grabs a 
pear, and begins to eat. Will is at last entlironed. He 
has brought every mental power into play. 

There has been studied care throughout these remarks 
to avoid any tendency toward static psychology. Sonie 
trainers of children thrive on the mysticisms of^mmd. 
To the majority it has proved a disastrous bore. Here we 
are engaged in growing a life, not in dissectmg a mmd. 
Yet since all the mental powers are essential factors in a 
12 



178 GROWING A LIFE 

complete mental act, just at this point there appears a 
general truth which never should be overlooked or for- 
gotten: The full orbed and most successful mind is that 
wherein the three powers, intellect, emotions, and will, are 
best developed and are equally balanced. 

To the lover of God's out of doors perhaps one of the 
saddest sights is that of a giant tree, whose roots have 
drawn sustenance from a thousand chambers deep down 
in the generous earth, lying prone beneath the weight of 
ax or storm, deprived of bearing fruit or yielding pro- 
tection to its friends, man and beast. But to lovers of 
men there is something sadder by far than that. It is to 
behold an intellect, colossal in proportions and power, 
shorn of value because it is linked with dwarfed emotions 
or a cankered will. Through the medium of letters 
view a Coleridge! At three able to read the Bible; at 
eight passionate and selfish yet a marvel in intellect; at 
fifteen a master of the classics and a lover of metaphysics, 
alternating Greek and Latin medical treatises with Vol- 
taire's philosophical dictionary; in college an inveterate 
reader, his room the council chamber of gowned poli- 
ticians, himself the life and fire of democracy in con- 
versation and debate. Preaching, editing, scheming to 
propitiate "the two giants Bread and Cheese"; a thinker 
and a dreamer, poet and critic; a full man at whose feet 
sat the great of the age, like children about a Pindar; 
deep, exhaustless, mysterious; of gifts so infinite in 
variety and so great that a patient and wise will would 
have placed him among the few achieving eternal fame; 
but of naturally unstable temper, aggravated in early 
life by poor discipline and later by the use of opium, 
falling at last into sorrowful imbecility, receiving from 
friends charity and from God beseeching forgiveness. 



POWERS i7g 

The geniuses of the world have so often proved defec- 
tive that the question, "Is not genius a disease?'* has 
been raised. A French satirist has said that enthusiasts 
without capacity are the really dangerous people. This 
is but saying that the emotional powers should never be 
cultivated at the expense of intellect or will. Such 
enthusiasts are indeed the sounding brass and tinkling 
cymbals of society. "They are the orators who speak 
often but have nothing to say; soldiers whose hearts 
bum for battle but whose legs run for peace ; the Marshal 
Neys who go out to bring back the 'Little Corporals' 
in cages and come marching home in a few hours with 
*Vive la Napoleon' upon their Hps." 

"Mr. Moody," said a dashing woman as the celebrated 
evangelist came down from his pulpit, "I thought your 
sermon this morning just swell; in truth, it was just too 
cute for anything." Excusing himself, Moody was seen 
to place his hands over the region of his heart, while 
signs of pain crossed his face: "What is the matter?" 
his friends anxiously inquired. "Oh," said Mr. Moody 
with a smile, "I guess I shall come round all right, but I've 
just been struck by a pile driver." High "sauciety," 
where pretense and folly usurp the place of toil, swarms 
with the "genus enthusiasticus." At a banquet a scholar 
of repute found by his side a gushing product of this 
type. "Doctor," simpered she, "I am just crazy about 
literature, aren't you?" The reply, while lacking in 
ardor, rejoiced the airy connoisseur of literary art, and 
the doctor was informed that she was reading Scott's 
Waverley for the fifth time. "Oh, I just dote on Scott," 
came the bubbHng assiurance of the worthiness of her 
course, and to his * ' Do you like his poetry ?" came the ready 
answer that she thought it "gorgeous." Opinions were 



i8o GROWING A LIFE 

exchanged as to Marmion and The Lady oj the Lake wherein 
he was told the first was "perfectly beautiful" and the 
other was ''sweet.'* Suddenly a thought occurred to the 
learned gentleman, and with a twinkle in his eye he 
sprung the trap. **And what do you think of Scott's 
Emulsion?" asked he. "Ah," said the radiant critic, 
clasping her hands and gazing into his face with literary 
enthusiasm, "I think it the best thing he ever wrote." 
Tragedy reveals its deepest plot when will is enthroned 
beside passionate emotion, while equal poise and grasp of 
intellect are lacking. A boy of noble brow and luminous 
eye stood and looked upon the sea as it leaped and roared 
under the sway of the storm. "My boy," said the 
anxious mother, who had in dismay searched for her 
child, "come home; the storm is upon you." The boy 
did not stir, but the hght of his eyes flashed brighter as 
the sky grew darker. "Come," cried the mother, "I 
command you to come with me and at once." Then 
the lad turned, and with strange and solemn mien replied, 
"I was not born to be commanded but to command." 
Alas that. this young Bonaparte did not find a force, a 
home, a teacher, and environing power to lift his intel- 
lectual prudence to an equal plane with his irresistible 
enthusiasm and matchless will. Then would the flame 
wliich at the end of the first Italian campaign leaped 
forth in such utterances as "I see what I may become; I 
already behold the world beneath me as if I were being 
carried through the air," have been a fire of philanthropy 
such as was never kindled on altars of liberty. Then 
would that imperious v/ill, evidenced in Marengo, Aus- 
terlitz, Jena, and Friedland, world conqueiing, have con- 
quered self, and Napoleon's path across the map of 
liistory been traced in lines of love and praise rather 



POWERS i8i 

than in blood and carnage, and posterity could have said, 
"His honor and the greatness of his name 
Shall make new nations." 

Such unbalanced education has been and will continue 
to be the chief retarder of civilization. The governments 
are calling for leaders who will put integrity above par- 
tisanship and self-love,— men who think broadly, feel 
kinship with all life, and act in the fear of God. The 
answer comes slowly v/hile graft and greed jeer at democ- 
racy, and the hope of a righteous republic is delayed. 
The church as well as the government appeals, but the 
story of the Life Beautiful passes but little beyond the 
ear. It falls upon an unemotional (that is, "not motional") , 
unsympathetic people. These are the products of our 
schools and homes. Textbooks and routine, neglect and 
unnatural processes for six days will prevent the most 
wonderful tale of love from reaching the brain centers 
on the seventh. Some speak of the strange reception 
given the Nazarene by his people. Read history, and 
wonder will disappear. They had been educated to 
this rejection for a thousand years. Put in your schools 
what you would have the nation he. 

Greece was wonderful and brilliant, but she was imbal- 
anced. She loved art, and she gave to the world an art 
that has been "a glory to Greece and a reproach to the 
remainder of the world." But she loved art for its own 
sake, and when she needed something else to sustain her 
she had nothing but thought; and so she died. 

Judea arose, and gave to the earth two religions of 
power. Overstepping thought, mere thinking, the Jew 
took into his heart the love of humanity, and let it waken 
every fiber of being. The result? The religions of 
Judea have for hundreds of years exemplified the deepest 



1 82 GROWING A LIFE 

feelings of the world, have been the very strength of all 
religious and ethical emotions. But Judea was one- 
sided; she felt, but did not think or create, and the 
Roman conqueror drove through the streets of the impe- 
rial city dragging Judea captive at his chariot wheels. 

Rome resolved that she would teach mankind the 
lesson of empire. She created an empire such as had 
never before been seen. But where is Rome? Ask of 
the ruins that mark the seven hills above the Tiber. 
Rome willed, but she did not justly think or feel. 

So the civilizations have gone, each striving for a 
balanced development. Centuries roll by, but the ideal 
is not realized. From the shores of a kingdom across the 
sea there sets forth the Mayflower. It contains the germ 
of the Magna Chart a. Will it prosper better in this new 
America? History, reaching from Plymouth Rock to 
Manila Bay, records the answer. It is the story of a 
new hope for the freedom of man — the story of a balanced 
civilization. 

True asceticism and abandoned depravity wrestled 
here for a few epochs, but from out the struggle burst at 
last the splendid, broad, true, typical American — one 
whose creed is to "do unto others as you would that they 
should do unto you," and one thing more — see that you 
do it and do not mouth it; one who says, "I take my lot 
with the Publican rather than the Pharisee"; one who 
stands for an idea and not for a class or sect; one who 
believes in men, not good men, not weak men, not wise 
men or foolish men, but all men; who holds with Lincoln 
"that God must have loved the plain people or he would 
not have made so many of them." 

Washington, Lincoln, Lee, these typify the balanced 
man. The following story told of Lincoln proves the 



POWERS 183 

truth of this. Many such stories could also be told of 
Washington and Lee: 

"One morning I called at the White House," said a 
gentleman, "and found Lincoln in good spirits. He had 
witnessed the play of Richard III the evening before, and 
he took up with me the discussion of that character. 
With the skill of an artist he portrayed the play of pas- 
sions, and with peculiar vigor he criticized the actor's 
version of the part. Laughingly I asked if he would not 
give me the act himself. To my amazement he reached 
up, took down a well-used copy of the play, turned to the 
passage, and launched forth into a reading that was the 
equal of anything I had ever Hstened to. 

"Before I could express my surprise and admiration 
there was a loud noise at the door, and in crowded a num- 
ber of frontiersmen, who with 'Hello, Abe!' and 'AH 
the old neighbors down on the Sangamon said howdy, * 
soon made it known they were the President's old friends. 
One tall fellow said he had made a bet that he was as tall 
as Lincoln, and he wanted it settled right now. So, with 
quip and laughter, the long, gaunt form of Lincoln was 
backed up against the door to get the needed measure. 
Later, with warmest good-bys, the callers took their 
departure. 

"The many sides of Lincoln's nature were successively 
to be touched that morning. A woman in black entered. 
After a kind, 'What can I do for you, my good woman?* 
she said, 'Mr. President, I come to ask you to release 
my boy from the army.' 'No,' said Lincoln. 'I have 
done too much of that, so Stanton says. I shall have to 
refuse you.* 'But, Mr. President,' said the woman, her 
voice aquiver, 'you see, it is this way. When the war 
came on there were four of us, three boys and I. We 



i84 GROWING A LIFE 

must help you, and so we said that the eldest boy should 
enlist. He was killed at Chickamauga. The other two 
said we must have some one at the front for you and the 
Union, and I agreed. When they brought my second boy 
home dead I thought my heart was gone. But at last the 
youngest pleaded so that I thought I could get along 
without him. I mortgaged my home and he went. But, 
Mr. Lincoln, I am starving; I must have my boy.' *My 
dear woman,' said the President, 'I did not know, did I? 
You shall have your boy. Stanton,' rang out the voice, 
and Stanton came. 'Fix a discharge for this woman's 
son, Stanton; her needs are greater than ours.' 'But, 
Mr. President' — Stanton got no further. 'Stanton,' said 
the President with a glint of steel in his sad eyes, *do 
this at once.' Stanton did it. Never shall I forget the 
scene as the President signed the paper. The woman in 
black stood behind Lincoln's chair stroking his coarse 
dark hair as if he were a child, while her tears fell fast 
upon his head. 'God bless you, Mr. Lincoln, and He 
will. No man need fear for the Union in such kind hands 
as yours.' " 

Here was a man who, in an hour, had thought with 
Shakspere, enjoyed with backwoodsmen, and felt with 
the heart of motherhood. Here was a balanced man. 
To this ideal every Anerican heart should be turned and 
is turned. Let those dealing with life hear ever in mind 
that there are three attitudes the mind can take personally, 
socially, religiously, or otherwise. It can think; it can feel; 
it can create. To keep these balanced has been at once the 
confusion and sublimity of man. 



CHAPTER XVI 
PROCESSES 

THROUGHOUT the organic world the life processes 
are three in ntimber. The lichen and the oak, the 
star-fish, and man thrive and multiply through absorption, 
assimilation, and reproduction. There is no exception to 
this law. Nourishment is taken, distributed to tissue and 
organ, and assimilated there, until sustained life fashions 
its genn or ovum, which is ready to absorb again; and the 
grand cycle is made complete. 

So truly do mental phenomena reveal the same processes 
and so precisely do the same terms, absorption, assimila- 
tion, and reproduction, apply to the threefold activity of 
the mind, that reason is forced to the conclusion that it 
is not analogy but an extension of natural law through an 
harmonious monism. An idea is absorbed or acquired, 
duly assimilated or reflected upon by certain faculties, and 
at last is reproduced in expression through the will. This 
expression is ready to be modified or absorbed again, and 
the grand cycle of mental operation is complete. 

Here is the surest, plainest, and most useful principle 
revealed to pedagogy. Without doubt it comes nearer 
to fm-nishing a panacea for all ills affecting mental processes 
than anything else thus far discovered. It develops order 
out of chaos. It has been the basis of normal methods of 
instruction in every age. It will continue in usefulness 
because it is so simple, so wholly applicable, and so clearly 
scientific. 

The efficacy of the principle lies largely in this, that 
common sense demands its respect and use when once it 

185 



i86 GROWING A LIFE 

is understood. The plant whose roots drink freely of suit- 
able nourishment would not be expected to fructify should 
it be clipped at the ground as soon as the stem appeared. 
Again, it would not be sensible to expect that though 
absorption by roots and assimilation by trunk, branch, 
and leaf should be perfectly carried out, fruit would develop 
and ripen if every manifestation of bud and flower were 
neglected or repressed. Just so is it clear to any thinking 
mind that the intellect may acquire all the facts, yet if 
these truths never reach into the atmosphere of the 
emotions it is but a moldy, sickly mentality indeed. But 
even shotdd these facts put on the assimilational forms 
of desire, hope, and love, and these never be permitted 
to break and bloom into expression and ripen into deeds, 
surely growth and life would be a mockery. It is plain 
that the three thought processes, absorption, assimilation, 
and reproduction, are necessary and must be completed. 
One process demands the other. A failure in one is a 
failure in all. 

Is it not strange that this truth, which it seems a babe 
might drink in with its mother's milk, has been shame- 
fully ignored and ruthlessly trodden under foot by teachers, 
parents, and individual learners who have reached an 
age of reason? To-day the ignorance of this principle, or 
its slothful abuse, if knowTi, is making many teachers mere 
lesson assigners and reciting posts rather than cooperators 
with Nature in the normal education of children. It is 
the shattering of this priceless jewel of threefold mental 
activity, by eliminating one function of the three, or two 
of the three, or all of the three, that makes instructors 
driving taskmasters instead of friends of children and 
brothers of Him who took the little ones in His arms 
and blessed them. 



PROCESSES 187 

This thought may be mixed with sentiment. Let us 
devoutly hope so. The average American, and that no 
doubt is an average broad enough to embrace most of us, 
needs to get his ears off the pipings of his own soul and 
attune them to the harmonies of the Life Beautiful. 
Children climbed His knees gladly, because He brought 
them Nature's processes. He attuned His soul to choirs 
visible and invisible in flowing stream, song of bird, childish 
laughter, and childish love. Take the eyes off our own 
narrow round, our own method, our own school and salary, 
and get out into God's good world to learn with Mrs. Wiggs 

"That beneath the mud and scum of things, 
Something always, always sings." 

In one of the best schools of the West a high-school 
inspector had come upon a fine class in the hands of 
a good and experienced teacher. The class getting into 
the midst of some splendid history topics, the inspector 
grew agitated. The teacher would fire twenty-two- 
caliber questions and the class would retaliate by peppering 
him with rejoinders of equal caliber or less. At the rattle 
of these small firearms the inspector grew nervous, wrung 
his hands, and finally, with his face flushing with indigna- 
tion, swung around to the superintendent near him and 
said, ** Why is it that a teacher will chop to pieces such a 
fine class as this with dwarfing questions when they are 
begging him to turn them loose on these topics and 
let them do some genuine, consecutive thinking?" The 
superintendent whispered, "Suppose you take a hand." 
He did. He slipped the leash, after a bit of pleasantry, 
by asking, "Who will take this question, go upon the 
floor, and tell what he thinks about it?" Up went the 
hands, and, facing the class, several pupils gave such 
excellent discussions that all were \4sibly aroused; 



i88 GROWING A LIFE 

enthusiastic comment came from all sides, and individual 
expression ripened so fully that every one in conscious 
happiness realized that here was something worth while. 

Step into seven high-school rooms out of ten, and you 
will find the teacher, like this automatic quizzer, blocking 
the way. That is blunt — but Dr. Holmes justifies .such 
blunt statement by saying that a "truth is a solid cube, 
while falsehood has many forms, and a lie is a handle which 
fits them all." See that class in science? The pupils 
are fairly bloated with impressions. They may not know 
it, any more than other abused soil, but there are a thou- 
sand seeds ready to germinate and grow out of their 
thoughts if the teacher will but get his question machine 
off the class and let the showers and sunshine of conscious 
effort and freedom of expression come in. Here comes 
a good question; it is picked up quickly, and away goes 
the class mind in chase of a truth. But "No," snaps 
the teacher, "no, that is not my point"; and with this 
jerk the entire group of thought runners lie flat on their 
mental backs. Again they line up at the wire, and away 
they start — only to be brought back once more that they 
may keep "goose step" to a jingle of small questions 
fashioned so that each one in the class may have an equal 
share in the lesson in the "required" number of minutes. 

Let it be written in large letters over the doors of the 
schools, so that he who runs may read, that schools are 
turned into prisons, teachers into jailers, and pupils into 
incompetent drudges because out of many impressions 
or acquisitions come few reflections and still fewer expres- 
sions. Most instructors cram, some require reflection, and 
a few give opportimity for free, genuine expression. When 
you contemplate the books, the schools, the lyceums, the 
magical rapid transit v/hich by ribbons of steel connects 



PROCESSES 189 

the ends of the earth in enlightenment, this is indeed 
strange. Strange, passing strange, that Nature, the one 
great teacher, should hold out so natural a process and 
even send disciples into every comer of the land, and yet 
in university, college, high school, and grades this problem 
of the trinity be despised, while text and routine prevail. 

Charles H. Ham, in his admirable work, Mind and 
Hand, exposes the educational crime committed when 
any one of these — absorption, assimilation, or expression 
— is neglected. He says: "The schools educate auto- 
matically. They train the absorbing powers of the brain 
but fail to cultivate the faculties of assimilation, and 
neglect almost wholly to develop the power of expression. " 
Then Mr. Ham proceeds to reinforce his remarks by 
giving several paragraphs of remarkable point and beauty 
from a treatise on this subject by John S. Clark of Boston. 
Here are some sentences of d3mamic power from this 
treatise : 

"Studying the functions of the brain, we find that for 
educational purposes it may be likened to an organism 
with a power of absorption, a power of assimilation or 
recreation, and a power of expression or giving out. The 
force of a brain is measured entirely by its expressing power. " 

"Now the equipping of a brain, or the healthy educa- 
tion of a brain, consists in giving it expressing power 
through the tongue and the hand, coextensive with the 
power of absorption and power of recreation. " 

" If now we follow the result of the brain equipment into 
practical life, we find that speech and writing, as means 
for expressing thought, have their applications mainly 
in the commercial and financial employments and the 
professions and then only incidentally in the industrial 
and mechanical employments. " 



IQO 



GROWING A LIFE 



''The simple fact is that our education is not broad enough 
on the expressing side of the brain, that too much attention 
has been given to the absorbing side oj this organ, that no 
adequate provision has been made whereby it can discharge 
its power in work connected with the industries.'' 

Mr. Ham does not stop with Mr. Clark as witness 
against the heinous process of mental stultification, but 
summons the master minds of America of the nineteenth 
century and bids them speak as those interested in educa- 
tion. Starting with the Quincy Movement of 1873, 
he moves through the cycle of the New Education, 
completing it by calling last upon Colonel Parker. 

Mr. Walton, an experienced educator of Massachusetts, 
says: "Too much has been attempted by the schools. 
There has been a slavish adherence to textbooks and no 
room given for freedom and originality of thought. Rules 
have been memorized and the children taught to recite 
from the textbook until they have not had the slightest 
conception of the true meaning of the subject. " 

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., says: "The imitative or 
memorizing faculties only are cultivated and little or no 
attention is paid to thinking or reflective powers." 

Professor Barbour of Yale declares: "Our schools are 
suffering from congestion of the brain; too much thought 
and too little putting it into practice. " 

Superintendent Wickersham of Pennsylvania: "It is 
high time that something should be done to enable the 
youth to learn trades and to form industrious habits and 
a taste for work." 

It is a delight to realize that a common faith annihilates 
time and space and makes us truly brothers with the 
immortals. Abraham in his time spoke to a simple, 
nomadic race, but God gave his words the color of faith 



PROCESSES 191 

which ages cannot pale. Moses gave the mutterings of 
Sinai to a simple tribe, but across brawling centuries of 
strife they call to us in the Ten Commandments. Jesus 
of Nazareth, broken upon a cross, bowed His head and 
yielded up His spirit ; but thousands daily put their hands 
in His, and He speaks again that "peace which passeth 
understanding." So by a similar power many a man or 
woman who never met Francis W. Parker looked into his 
face and touched his hand. 

Parker was the greatest defender of normal educational 
processes since the days of Horace Mann. He studied 
the charter of freedom granted to childhood by God's 
decree. He interpreted it by his own unerring love. He 
was a fighter. Pedagogical idlers, legislative shams, and 
jay-hawking school boards never slept well until March 
2, 1902, when Colonel Parker was called off picket duty. 

These are his words: "Nearly three hundred years 
ago, Cosmenius discovered a rule of teaching which may be 
said to embrace all rules in its category. Things that 
have to be learned or done should be learned by doing 
them. This rule is so simple and plain that every one, 
except the teachers, has adopted and used it since man has 
lived upon the earth. If I am not very much mistaken, 
the schoolmaster for the last fifty years has been inces- 
santly inventing ways of doing things in the schoolroom 
by doing something else. . . . We cram our victim's 
head full of empty, meaningless words instead of inspiring 
and developing it by the sweet and strong realities of 
thought. This futile struggle to do things by doing some- 
thing else is to-day costing the people of this country 
miUions and millions of hard-earned dollars. And it is 
much to be feared that it will one day cost their children 
the blessings of free government. " 



192 GROWING A LIFE 

How is it that the half-miUion teachers and millions of 
parents of this country read truths like this, and still the 
largest per cent the next hour take up the sickening round 
of routine and abnormal cram? It is clearly because we 
are victims more or less of this very educational process 
which Francis W. Parker condemns. Not one person in 
fifty is capable of assimilating as much as he acquires in 
the physical, mental, or moral life, and not one in thou- 
sands is capable of expressing the full measure of his 
reflections. Out of sheer resentment and deep-rooted 
rebellion against a process and a method which, as Parker 
says, have cost us so much and brought us so little, it 
would seem we would resist them to the death. 

Some one asks again, ''What is wanted?" Just this: 
in every physical, mental, and spiritual condition of life 
see that Nature's process, absorption, assimilation, and 
expression — reflected in every living thing — goes on. 
Never as Jar as unthin you lies permit a single exception to 
occur. Of all pathways of discharge, grooved in the brain, 
let this be the deepest and strongest. In every lesson at 
home, at school, or at church, see that the child thinks, 
that he reasons or reflects, and then in God's name not 
only give him opportunity to reflect but grip him with an 
eye of faith, support him with a conscious plan, not only 
until he can but until he must express. Express, express, 
express! With tongue or plow, pen or plane, brush or 
skillet, song or flower, express ! Get these and a thousand 
more avenues of expression into every place where chil- 
dren dwell, and let their souls feel the delight of creating 
(expressing), akin to that which the Divine experienced 
when He looked upon His own expression, a world. 

Expression is peculiarly important, though it is the 
clearest truth that at this point the weak instruction of 



PROCESSES 193 

the past made its blunder and the poor instruction of the 
present is to be found. Science reveals man as the animal 
peculiarly distinguished because of his manifold possibil- 
ities for doing things. But the command has been, 
*'Get your lesson," or "Study your lesson," — but not 
often enough, — "Do or express your lesson." David B. 
Henderson, once speaker of the House of Representatives, 
was asked to what he owed his ascendency in life. "To 
the debating club in the 'old-field' school," was his reply. 
He was right. There the only chance for a clean sprint 
in consecutive thought was offered. There in that 
"literary" was a chance to do, to become, — to rout that 
fellow who had asserted his equality or superiority in too 
many offensive ways. To-day the school without a good 
debating club or some regular argumentative combat is 
not a well-rounded school. The school that does not 
possess a literary society in which declamation, composi- 
tion, and varied forms of expression are practiced and 
encouraged may call itself a school, — but what's in a name? 

We should like to have manual training accompanied 
by all the kindred industrial arts — sloyd, weaving, paper 
cutting; also by agriculture, horticulture, school garden- 
ing, and all that. We have some of these, and many 
others, as reading, writing, and like avenues for conveying 
ideas. From first day to last we should seek to open up 
a way by which the child's soul may escape into realms 
of fitting and beautiful expression. 

Let us with this splendid elixir of Nature's own process 
put an end to mental, moral, and physical dyspepsia. 
Preach and practice less absorption, more assimilation, 
and still more expression. This psychology is as good for 
practice as for preaching, as good for the teacher as the 
taught, as good for tlie individual in home and office as 

13 



194 GROWING A LIFE 

for the lecturer and the scientist. It is a brave physician 
who will take his own prescription, but here is a mental 
prescription for growing a Hfe you can yourself take as 
well as give, every hour. You can not only recommend 
it, but you can insure it. Say to any teacher, mother, 
father, preacher, business man, or student that if he or she 
will apply the three processes to every subject presented, 
first absorb it, then assimilate it, and last express it, you 
will forfeit your life if each is not master of the situation 
at no distant day. 

But remember, as you preach or practice this beneficent 
cycle of Nature, that the all-important point is that you 
grow through expression. If you know things, there is a 
strong desire to express them. It is Nature's way of 
deepening our impressions, this thing of recounting them. 



CHAPTER XVII 
THE GREAT IDEAL 

THE finest of all arts is the art of right living. The 
best proof of the existence of a deity is a well-poised, 
cultured, and mature human being. We have been grow- 
ing a life in these pages. We have thought together. Up 
from the ovum we have seen life spring, a thing of force 
and growth. Under the expansion of self -activity we 
have heard it laugh and sing in conscious pleasure as it 
rejoiced in its growth toward its destined end. Within 
right environment we have seen it fed, stimulated, directed 
through normal appetite, time, and freedom, and thus as 
a natural phenomenon under natural law, its powers, 
intellect, sensibilities, and will have unfolded equally. 
Wedded with all life, its processes of growth are as simple 
and sublime as the triune method by which God grows a 
violet or a leviathan. 

Now, with suspense, but in love and expectation, we 
ask, "What shall the harvest be?" Looking upon our 
own growing life or into the trustful eyes of our children, 
it is a wonderful question to ask, "What shall we train 
this life to be?" The worth of it is disclosed when the 
inexorable makes it a question of iron and granite which 
will not be worn away by evasion or neglect. You must 
answer it, teachers in the schools, ministers of the church, 
parents of children, and individual souls, whether you will 
or not; and whether you will or not, your answer will be 
recorded. 

A mother sat beside the cradle of her first born, and 
after happy play and crooning lullaby both mother and 

195 



196 GROWING A LIFE 

child fell asleep. Visions bom of fond and anxious care 
flitted through the mother's mind. Beside the cradle 
stood an angel in magnificent array. "Let me, O Mother, 
touch this child, and he shall never know want. I am 
Wealth, and all whom I touch are princes in the realm of 
riches." But the mother said not a word, and he passed 
from view. Another came, of eagle eye and commanding 
voice. He said: "I am Fam.e, and those I claim shall 
know not death, for favor of men shall cling to them 
throughout all time." The mother heart sat heedless, 
and Fame went his way. **0 Mother," cried a third, 
"give me your babe to touch, and the coveted prize of 
all the earth shall be forever his. I am Beauty, and all 
the graces wait on me." Still the mother sat unmoved. 
Then came Power, Love, and many more, until at last a 
sweet voice said: "Those that I touch have paths of 
thorns to tread and some have crowns of thorns thrust 
upon their heads, but one thing do they ever — they cleave 
to their ideals." The mother's soul leaped, and kneeling 
at the feet of this low-voiced spirit she begged that her 
child be touched and blessed. 

The annals of man reveal that this mother chose the 
better part. Behind all discussion and all effort and 
all organization to better the lot of humanity, stands the 
yearning love of the great reformers; and bending these, 
as reeds before the wind, sweeps the idea or ideal. As 
interesting a moment for civilization as history records 
is that in which man has stopped to pick out his heroes. 
The old plaster-cast theory has divinity immovable, but 
the face of Jehovah must have glowed with joy when 
Judea chose the obedient Abraham as its guide, and must 
have been shadowed with dismay as Rome made Nero 
emperor. 



THE GREAT IDEAL 197 

Here then let the question be asked of the trainers and 
companions of children: "What do you expect them to 
be?" When, after the textbooks are laid aside, the last 
lesson is said, telling you *'good-by" they tiun to an 
exacting world, how will the lives you have helped to 
grow respond to the everyday demands of duty? How 
will your educational goods, these children, be rated in 
the markets of success? Will press of competition and 
superior mental products from other schools or other fire- 
sides send your boys to the servant list while others, 
through merit, move round to the master's desk? Will 
your pupils give orders as a potent soul sometime should, 
or will they like weaklings receive them all the time ? Do 
not dodge or evade ; necessity with a big stick is waiting 
around the comer. Stand up as associates of young life 
should, with heels together, heart full, and chin firm, 
while you give your answer. What is your teaching worth ? 

It is plain that it will not suffice to declare that our aims 
are to deliver to the world an educated man, a creature 
of mere habit, without denomination as to what that 
habit is. The veriest sneak thief could claim as much 
for his education. It is not sufficient to say we are doing 
our best to turn out pupils who will do the best they can. 
That sort of purposeless growth is developed in the school 
of Apology and about the hearthstone of Excuse. "The- 
best-I-can ' ' boy is an abbreviated edition of the man who 
needs a mustard plaster to make him feel. This training 
develops *'the jumper who never quite clears the bar, the 
poet whose verses ever limp, the artist whose colors are 
always on the run, and the woman whose buttons refuse 
to stay on." He is the twig that becomes that stick of a 
lawyer who gets but one client and that one the jailer 
takes off his hands, or the doctor who sent in a certificate 



198 GROWING A LIFE 

of death with his name signed in the space reserved for 
"cause." 

Children shovild Hve in an atmosphere saturated with 
positivity. Clear and scintillating as the facets of the 
Kohinoor must flash the meaning of life to the young. 
Books, apparatus, buildings, and organization are but so 
many index fingers pointing receptive life to the most 
inspiring possibiHty, — a rounded, creative soul. Accu- 
mulated wisdom cries so loud the dullest may hear that 
education is not giving something, but finding something. 
It is the child discovering self. It is poverty and struggle 
buffeting the spirit of the boy Edison until, like good school- 
masters, they have stripped him of the rags of ease and 
idleness and revealed to him his own genius. Education 
is not information; it is an attitude. 

Lowell speaks of the "thread of the all-sustaining 
beauty, which doth run through all and doth all unite." 
It is within the plan of Nature to fashion tall, sun- 
crowned men and women out of these children about us. 
Under the law of continuity, the force which makes a 
Luther Burbank makes also a good community farmer. 
The virtues of that bunch of boys in khaki storming 
San Juan Hill are of precisely the same quality as those 
of a Washington. Let no unfeeling, unsympathetic 
reader challenge these paragraphs as so much shooting 
at impossibilities. One may refuse to see it, but what 
the young need is to associate with optimists — optimists 
like Christ, who sent through the world a shout, "All 
things are possible to him that believeth." 

"Monsieiu:," said Mirabeau's secretary, "what you 
require is impossible." "Impossible!" cried the rev- 
olutionist, springing from his chair. "Never mention 
that blockhead of a word to me again." The ideal is a 



THE GREAT IDEAL 199 

tie which binds the hero of the shop with the hero of the 
cabinet. It Hnks the factory girl, dying that others may 
live, to Helen Gould, living that others may not die. 
The same qualities that give peculiar radiance to the 
names of Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, and Frances 
E. Willard shine through the lives of plain girlhood 
everywhere, girls who bear in their young and tender breasts 
the burdens and destinies of mankind. The "thread of 
all sustaining beauty" loops itself about the brain of every 
normal child and binds it to genuine success if those who 
lead the child know where and how to touch it. 

Here is the place again to say that there is a difference 
in the powers of children but no difference in the spirit. 
It should he repeated over and over that there is enough of 
the God in every mind to grow it into infinite beauty and 
worth if hut properly cultivated. Any mind is oj God^ 
and any of God is infinite. Helen Keller is indisputable 
proof of this. A child lost in threefold darkness, through 
threefold enthusiasm brought to a pinnacle of intel- 
lectual power which has rendered her a marvel of the 
age. This liberating principle of all life, which should he 
the one supreme agent of education everywhere, is enthusi- 
astic, righteous doing; and its product, the supreme, cli- 
mactic product of the educational process, is ''the enthusiastic 
righteous doer.'' 

The old Greeks coined the word enthusiasm because 
they must have a term to explain some of the actions of 
their children. When Phidias chiseled marble into 
grapes which birds pecked at, or released from stone the 
figure of a Jove before which men trembled, they must 
find excuse for his conduct by exclaiming, "He is pos- 
sessed of a spirit. He is enthusiastic." But why pause 
here, for while the term originated with Hellas the 



200 GROWING A LIFE 

substance of enthusiasm sprang coexistent with the 
origin of the suns. 

Shelley said that the Almighty gave men and women 
arms long enough to reach to the stars if they would only 
put them out. Enthusiasm, the arm of the heart, is 
the Aladdin's lamp of the American child. With it 
Ben Franklin reached out, and from being a slovenly, 
ill-treated printer's apprentice became the first philan- 
thropist and philosopher of America, and at last an 
arbiter at the courts of international freedom. With this 
arm Washington reached across the path of the British 
lion, though in the snows of Valley Forge he must needs 
fall upon his knees to implore the God of hosts to com- 
plete what he in patriotic enthusiasm had undertaken. 
This was the arm which raised the myriad hosts that 
tested with blood the covenant of this federal Union and 
at last permitted the swords of Grant and Lee to be alike 
sheathed in stainless honor. This spirit of righteous 
doing, this reach of the strenuous life, has wrought the 
modem miracle of miracles. 

Behold the scene! Forty years ago a war-worn, ex- 
hausted land, rent with passion and partisanship; with a 
population impoverished in finance and undeveloped in the 
arts and sciences. To-day what greets the eye and ear? 
United, and each state in possession of local self-govern- 
ment, the federal constitution unchanged save as respects 
the great issues submitted to the arbitrament of war; 
humming with her factories, shouting with her printing 
presses, flashing her lightning-sped secrets through the air 
and beneath the wave ; every section in full sympathy with 
all the present grandeur and imperial promise of a glorious 
union of over one hundred million souls, America stands 
to-day the teacher and leader of the nations. 



THE GREAT IDEAL 201 

This is the story that must be told over and over to 
our children. The wonderful work of the enthusiastic y 
righteous doer. They must become such. Nor must we 
merely tell the story. We must let it sink deep into our 
own minds until it becomes part of our very fiber. Still 
more, we must Hve it, act it. In every sunrise, we must 
find a challenge for children calling for eager, righteous 
effort, and we must ride to battle with them. In every 
lesson of head, heart, and hand, we must find a Golden 
Fleece or a Holy Grail to seek. Woe unto us if in their 
presence we shrink from test or impending struggle! 
With our own lives we must preach the gospel of the 
impertinence of Fate, so that the deathly mirage which 
projects any occasion as small or any privilege as petty 
may never perplex their vision or ours. 

One picttu-e should be presented to the salary-drawing, 
time-serving, excuse-making, half-hearted teacher of this 
land, whether wasting her talents on a class of three 
husky Americans out on the edge of No-Man's Land or 
up among an ideal thirty in a palace of brick and stone 
with tessellated floors and with art and science joining 
hands to keep her contented. This should be the pic- 
ture: A Syrian sun at its zenith in a white sky, sending 
its summer rays upon the dusty road that leads from 
Jerusalem to Jericho; upon the stone well ciurb at Sychar 
sits a traveled-stained Figure. The face shows lines of 
sickly sweat, but you see the eyes, and all interest centers 
in them as you mark their burning beauty. You note 
they are reading the woman standing near with a water 
pot in her hands. You seem to hear the Man say some- 
thing of "living water," and with wonderful skill this 
Teacher leads the poor pupil on tmtil the need of the 
recreant woman has been laid bare by the Son of Man. 



202 GROWING A LIFE 

With eager heart, lest He lose her, you hear Him say what 
the crowds in the synagogue and even the beloved dis- 
ciples tried but in vain to wring from Him — a declaration 
of his Messiahship: "I that speak unto thee am He." 

Over this picture there should be written, "The En- 
thusiastic Righteous Doer," and beneath, these words, 
**Here is a teacher that never despised an opportunity." 

Surrounded by the influence of earth's richest life, 
let us now close this message. There was a young man 
who had attached himself to a painter. He had only one 
aim, — to paint as his master painted. Year after year 
every energy was bent in the one direction. But still the 
goal was not reached. Seated one day before the canvas, 
he felt the spirit of the master glow within him. Seizing 
his brush, with swift sure strokes he began to paint. But 
ere the vision was fixed on the canvas the flame died down 
and again his ideal eluded him. Discouraged by the 
realization of his failure, he cast aside his brushes and, 
overcome by weariness and despair, sank to sleep. As he 
slept, the master entered the room, saw the unfinished 
canvas, and with one deft stroke left an impress that was 
all the awaking pupil needed to realize his ideal. 

So with us. We may fall short of the goal, but when 
at last we sink to sleep, with aim and aspiration still 
unrealized, may it not be that the Master will enter the 
room and with loving hand aid us to reach our ideal? 



AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 

CHAPTER I 
The Law of Laws 
The teacher is benefited by her endeavor to assist the 

child. 

The teachers of America have been progressive. 
Education as a science is not yet a real science. 
Principles of education need to be defined with exact 

"^Nature the infallible guide, and physical law the only 
basis of a system of pedagogy. 

Nature defined. 

Man or mind a proof of this definition. 



CHAPTER II 
The Law of Continuity 

The great discovery of the nineteenth century. 

There is but one world, controlled by the supreme law, 
the law of continuity. , ^ .1 i 

Rehgion, science, poetry, and art acknowledge the law 
of continuity as the basis of their existence. 

The child, a phenomenon of Nature, studied as any 
other work of Nature under the law of continuity, is the 
center of pedagogics. , . 

Modem psychology, obeying this, rests its reasoning 

on a physical basis. 

?o3 



204 GROWING A LIFE 

CHAPTER III 
Mind and Force 

Searching for a definition of mind through natural 
phenomena. 

Mind defined by Nature as a force. 

That mind is a force need not mystify, because it is 
simple. 

This definition forgotten, misused, or abused. 

Learning comes by opening up a way for mind rather 
than by the filling in of mind. 

CHAPTER IV 
Mind and Growth 

Mind is a force distinguished from other forces. 

Under continuity upon the physical basis, the classifica- 
tion is made. 

Mind neither a chemical nor a physical force. 

Mind found to be a force of growth. 

This truth applied under the law of continuity makes 
the whole growth-world reveal the mind. 

To grasp this, teachers must cultivate the sense of 
symbolizing. 

All the great teachers have recognized this. 

Christ the master teacher addressed the mind as a 
simple phenomenon of growth. 

CHAPTER V 

Consciousness 

Mind still further classified or differentiated. 
The reasoning of Charles Darwin examined and utilized 
in differentiating mind from other forces of growth. 



AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 205 

From the survival of the fittest, through growth, man 
passed from mere growth to instinct or habit. 

Up to this time all has been done by the Hfe energy or 
material energy. Mind had nothing to do with it. 

At a certain point in the history of man the vibration 
from the sense organs passing to the association centers 
met mind, which remembered, imagined, reasoned, and 
willed. 

Mind became a conscious growing thing. 

The beneficent working of this truth in school and home. 

Clear understanding between the study of psychology 
and a few simple laws of Nature necessary to the teacher. 

If mind is a conscious growing thing it takes a soul 
conscious of its own possibilities and powers to awaken it. 

The call is for trainers of children conscious of the 
truth that the child mind is heir to all of Nature's gifts 
and the beauties of Nature's revelation through literature. 



CHAPTER VI 

Self-activity 

Mind reached, as all things for good are reached, through 
love. 

Great teachers have been great philanthropists. 

The basis upon which the mind has been Hberated is, 
"The mind is naturally self -active. " 

This truth founded on natural phenomena. 

Self-active mind pictured between the two Hfe forces, 
heredity and environment. 

Dnmimond gives a system of pedagogy in a paragraph. 

Heredity dismissed. So far as the living child is con- 
cerned, we cannot go back of the blood corpuscle. 



2o6 GROWING A LIFE 

Environment all-important because it can be adjusted 
to self -active mind. 

The material "me" calls for close study of the body 
of the child. 

The social "me" calls for the closest study of the 
child's companions, father, mother, and teacher. 

The spiritual "me" demands sunshine, pictures, 
laughter, flowers, and the spirit of Froebel in the home 
and schools. 

That mind is naturally self -active is the most encourag- 
ing truth Nature can present to home or school. 

It calls, however, for large minds to grasp and apply it. 

Self-activity has been and will continue to be the 
central principle of all educational enterprise. 

CHAPTER VII 
Righteousness 

The mind is growing out of superstition into science, 
out of weakness into strength. 

Mind, under the search of science, revealed in the 
past century as a creation of right, not wrong. Weakness 
is of the flesh, not of the spirit. 

The teacher is powerless who does not accept the 
Nature-revealed truth that mind naturally grows right, 
or mind unnaturally grows wrong. 

Illustrations of how the acceptance of an old principle 
like this may make a new teacher, a new school or home, 
and a new life for the child. 

That mind naturally grows right is a supreme plea for 
individualizing. 

Mind is all right. Lift off the false weights of environ- 
ment and it will always grow right. 



AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 207 

CHAPTER VIII 
Happiness the Birthright 

A resume of the preceding principles made: The 
four statements, "Mind is a force," "Mind is a force of 
growth," "Mind is a conscious growing thing," and 
"Mind naturally grows right," have been established by 
Nature. 

The mind studied still further as a natural phenomenon 
reveals that all of its right growth is enjoyable. 

Is life normal? Then it is happy. Is mind normal? 
Then it is happy. Pain should never be mixed with 
instruction. 

Any exercise of school or home, as reading, writing, 
playing, singing, when not accompanied by pleasure is 
unnatural. 

All trainers of children failing to adapt themselves, 
their schools, and their homes to the great natural princi- 
ple, "Mind naturally enjoys growing right," will fail 
utterly. 

A description of a school developed under this law. 

CHAPTER IX 
Mind Food 

Some postulates deduced from basic truths formerly 
announced. 

First, mind may be fed. The law of continuity suggests 
that mind may be fed precisely as the body is fed. 

You should begin with the body if you would have 
the mind grow right. 

All true teachers have developed mind by nursing and 
preserving the body. 



2o8 GROWING A LIFE 

The ventilation, temperature, sanitation, and general 
environment of the child for health in school and home 
challenged. 

The teacher not as interested or enlightened on this 
subject, ** Mental Food," as necessity demands. 

The subject of dietetics assuming world-wide interest. 
Fletcherism is claiming a common interest with aerial 
navigation. 

Analogy implies that mental foods may be classified 
under the same headings as the physical. 

An application of this revealed through illustration. 

This postulate, "The mind may be fed," should be 
traced as far as possible. The farther we go, the more 
plainly is it revealed that we get the mind as we get the 
body. 

CHAPTER X 

Stimuli 

Organic and inorganic substances demand stimuli. 
Under this law we may safely conclude that mind may be 
stimulated. 

The blood is the food of the brain, oxygen is the blood's 
chief stimulus, while the food which the child eats serves 
to supply right or wrong stimuli through the blood to 
the mind. 

The home life of the child unreceptive to these truths, 
yet not more so than is the teacher. 

The old viewpoint of education, that of developing the 
academics only, has grown unsatisfactory. 

Mind and body indissolubly linked; what strengthens 
one strengthens the other. 

Rest and sleep for the child should be obtained by 
the school and the home. 



AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 209 

A plea for the study of the health movement and 
for playgrounds for every child. 

Mind itself, even as does a muscle, seems to respond to 
the stimulus of exercise. 

The joy of conquest the great mental stimulus. Offer 
the child mind something worthy to conquer. 

Variety, as a stimulus to mind and body, essential. 

The teacher must interpret her mission as that of one 
who is to dispense natural stimuli to the child mind. 

This truth applied in description of the preparation 
of a teacher for her work. The teacher the strongest of 
all stimuli in the schoolroom. 

CHAPTER XI 
Training 

Nature presents another postulate of mind-growth, 
because it is true of all growth, '*Mind may be directed 
or trained." 

Education receives its severest tests in this, that due 
to the plasticity of matter change of mental direction 
may be made with ease at certain periods and with great 
difficulty at others. 

This is the point where Nature begins to build habit. 

The remarkable treatise on habit by Dr. William 
James discussed and analyzed. 

The whole subject of mental training is placed in a 
paragraph by James. This begins: "The great thing, 
then, in all education is to make our nervous system our 
ally instead of our enemy." 

The application of this truth has always separated 
weakness from strength, ability from incompetency, and 
explains that genius is nothing but an attention to details. 

14 



2IO GROWING A LIFE 

The four laws by which James secures right habits 
of the mind given and illustrated : 

"Launch with as strong and decided an initiative as 
possible." 

"Never suffer an exception to occur until the new habit 
is securely rooted in life. " 

"Seize the very first opportunity to act on every 
resolution made. " 

"Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by gratuitous 
exercise every day." 

Habit not second nature but "ten times nature." 
Personal traits are settled between the fifth and twentieth 
years, and professional tendencies between the twentieth 
and thirtieth. Let the school and the home never 
forget this. 

This law of habit displays character as a result of each 
day's training. 

CHAPTER Xn 
Appetite 

Out of the nattu-al attributes of growth sprang the 
statement, "Mind may be fed." From this issues the 
proposition that mind must have appetite. 

The movement of the mind through the years has been 
toward monism ; the amoeba and the physical man reveal 
kindred desires for nourishment. 

When the child refuses to eat, the verdict is he is ill. 
When the mind refuses to take food with joy, it is ill. 

Non-attendance at school is a proof that mental appetite 
is lacking. 

All improvement must rest upon the basis that the 
physical child is one and the same with the mental child. 



AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 211 

Conserve the appetite of the mind by regulating all 
functions of the body through careful physical training 
and inspection and by the proper selection and combina- 
tions of foods. 

Teachers too often ignore the laws of mental combina- 
tion, succession or variety. 

False stimulants, irregular hours, and overloading to 
be avoided. 

Andrew S. Draper quoted on overloading the cur- 
riculum. 

Cheerfulness a necessary sauce for the mental pabulum. 

CHAPTER XIII 
Time 

The time element is a potential factor in Nature and 
in education. 

Fiske's idea that babyhood has made man what he is. 

The great loss of pupils to the grammar school through 
its period of eight years. 

Suggestions for extending the average school life of 
the child centers in making the child's life in the school 
a happy one. 

The present ciirriculum is within the range of mental 
activity, perhaps, but too extensive in scope for the time 
involved. 

A curriculum should never be mistaken for mental 
growth or as a perfect measure for mental capacity. 

Every effort to establish an arbitrary measure of time 
for grammar school or high school, college or university, 
is unsuccessful because unnatural. 

Conclusions of all educational committees on courses 
of instruction end in this: Rate the pupils' growth by 



212 GROWING A LIFE 

apparent powers and accomplishments rather than by 
hours, days, and years. Distribute promotions upon 
the basis of effort, not of examinations. 

The "perfected" or "finished" instructor is the chief 
time destroyer in the present system of schools. 

Everything in the school day should bend and move 
about the needs of the child. 

A picture of a teacher who acts upon this truth; an 
opposite view. 

If the time problem must be solved it can be done only 
by a teacher who lives completely. The philosophy of 
medievalism must yield to the philosophy of service. 

CHAPTER XIV 
Freedom 

Mind must have freedom. This is reflected every- 
where in Nature. 

The blight of groove and conformity rests too much 
upon present-day education. 

Spencer, Ruskin, Emerson, Dickens, and other thinkers 
brought freedom of mental life to the child. 

Not enough freedom yet. Higher education and all 
education suffering from too much satisfaction. 

The common-school system is the center of the greatest 
educational freedom. 

The public-school teacher is the chief apostle and 
interpreter of this mental freedom. 

The answer to the question, "How may we secure a 
better school and better school sentiment?" is the 
teacher, receptive, self-reliant, unbiased, free. 

A capable and free teacher destructive to monotony, 
grind, and lock-step uniformity. 



AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 213 

Professor Dolbear's allegory. 
Characteristics which mark free schools. 
A succinct view of education under freedom. 

CHAPTER XV 

Powers 

A resimie of preceding principles. 

Under the law of continuity the natural powers of the 
mind discovered and classified. 

Nature demands a balanced mind. 

Some views of ill poise, or unbalanced conditions, of 
mind. 

Unbalanced or one-sided education retards civilization. 

Greece, Judea, and Rome typify one-sided education. 
The United States developing the whole man. 

CHAPTER XVI 
Processes 

The natural world, presenting ever5rwhere thought 
processes corresponding to its three powers. 

The three thought processes, absorption, assimilation, 
and reproduction, are necessary and must be completed. 
A failure in one is a failure in all. 

A plea for a Httle more sentiment touching the teachers' 
ideals. 

The teacher the chief obstacle to free, consecutive 
thinking in the school. 

Schools and homes deprived of joyous power because 
out of many impressions come few reflections and still 
fewer expressions. 

The views of some great thinkers on this question. 
Francis W. Parker denominates the destruction of this 



214 GROWING A LIFE 

natural process of the mind in our schools and homes 
a national crime, tending toward the loss of free govern- 
ment. 

The great commandment in the methodical decalogue 
is, "See that Nature's process, reflected in every living 
thing — absorption, assimilation, and expression — goes 
on in all mental, physical, and spiritual life. " 

Expression peculiarly important. 

CHAPTER XVII 
The Great Ideal 

In the natural world of growth there were three hours, 
three powers, and three processes. 

Corresponding with these there m^^st be products. 

In mental growth three forms present themselves, — 
mere creatures of habit, creatures of mediocrity, and 
creatures of enthusiastic, righteous deeds. 

Schools and homes must set up an ideal as to what 
product of childhood must be had. 

Child growth must fructify in an atmosphere saturated 
with positivity. 

The school and home should keep in mind the fact that 
the common people are fullest of possibilities. 

There may be a difference in the powers of children 
but there is no difference in the spirit. 

Enthusiasm is an arm of the mind which will reach any 
successful end. 

America is a product of the enthusiastic, righteous doer. 

The One Complete Man was an educational product 
of this type. 

The school and the home, the teacher and the parent, 
should train and develop the child's mental tendencies 
toward this plain, approachable, yet divine ideal. 



'"What is the child Worth in the tight of 
eternity?' should confront the teacher at eVert^ 
stage of his Work.** 

Common Sense Didactics. 

These books will help him to supply the answer. 

THE CHILD 
His Thinking, Feeling, and Doing 

By amy ELIZABETH TANNER, Ph.'D., 

Formerly Professor of Philosophy, Wilson College, 

Chambersburg, Penn. 

A study of the child from birth to adolescence. "It is 
remarkable," says Bertha Payne, Head of the Kinder- 
garten Department, School of Education, University of 
Chicago, "that the author has been able to present the 
main facts of psychology with the data of child study and 
the pedagogical bearing of both in a so brief yet scholarly 
manner. The volume is admirably adapted to fill a 
pressing need long felt by teachers in normal schools, in 
training classes, and in reading circles." 



EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP 

By Dr. GEORG KERSCHENSTEINER 

Member of the Royal Council of Education; 

Director of Public Schools, Munich. 

Translated by 
A. J. PRESSLAND for the Commercial Club, Chicago. 

"A landmark in the history of education," says Michael 
Sadler, of the University of Manchester. The result of 
practical achievement, "it throws fresh light on the 
educational responsibility of the state, and makes clear 
that education for citizenship is no less indisf)ensable than 
preparation for trade." 



Correspondence invited. 



RAND McNALLY O COMPANY. PUBLISHERS 
Chicago New York 



OCT 10 1912 



**EVeri^ day should add something neW to the 
outfit of the teacher." George Howland. 

In each of these books you will find fresh impetus 
to work, fresh wisdom, fresh courage. 

COMMON SENSE DIDACTICS 

By henry SABIN, LL. D. 

Superintendent of Public Instrudicn for the S ate of Iowa 

for Eight Years, 

"Henry Sabin's Common Sense Didactics is one of 
the really great books that has been written by an Ameri- 
can educator." 

A. E. Winship, Journal of Education, Boston, Mass. 
"It is the counsel of a veteran educator whose ex- 
perience has taken in every phase of school work." 

Orville T. Bright, District Supt. of the Public Schools, 
Chicago, III. 

INDUSTRIAL WORK FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

By ADELAIDE M. HOLTON, formerly Supervisor of Primary 

and Industrial Work in the Public ScJiools, 

AND ALICE F. ROLLINS. Principal Sheridan School, 

Minneapolis, Minn. 

"At a time when we are looking toward the light in our 
endeavor to solve the problem of industrial work in the 
schools this book comes as a very valuable contribution . 
to educational literature." 

Wilhelmina Seegmiller, Director of the Art Department 
oj the Public Schools, Indianapolis, Ind, 

HAND LOOM WEAVING 

By MATTIE PPIIPPS TODD 
of the Horace Mann School, Minneapolis, Minn. 

"Mrs. Todd has done remarkably good work for the 
schools. Her book represents a thoroughly helpful line 
of work which will be a basis for a more wholesome manual 
training for older girls, as well as for primary children who 
are first concerned. 

Sarah Louise Arnold, Dean of Simmons College, Boston, 

Let us hear from you. 

RAND McNALLY €^ COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 
Chicago New York 



